Keep Me Safe
by HollyShannenForever
Summary: After 5 years of torture, Prue is rescued by Andy & returned to her sisters. New complications arise when she is afraid to love again & her younger sister Piper is keeping a deadly secret from everyone, which may just destroy the strongest bonds between sisters and lovers. All human, includes the 4 Halliwell sisters & their soul mates. Piper/Leo; Prue/Andy; Phoebe/Coop; Paige/Henry
1. Behind the Sunglasses

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474, TVADDiCT11, lightuptheworld2, and Aviva426 for helping me with this story! Hope you enjoy! Here we go...**

A young woman was standing on an overpass and blankly staring at the traffic below her. Cars zoomed left and right. Horns honked. It was a busy day in the foggy city of San Francisco. She put her hands on the ledge and closed her eyes. She was about to swing her legs over and push herself off, but she hesitated.

There were people she loved in the world, her sisters. She tried to think about them and she wanted to see them one last time to apologize for being so stupid. Then she remembered that they had their own lives now. _He'd_ taken her back there and the house was filled with people at a party. They were having fun without her. Why would they want her back now after she'd basically abandoned them for _him_?

Her sisters might have been finished mourning her, but they would be pleasantly surprised if she showed up at their doorstep suddenly. Maybe they had a faint belief in the fact that she was still out in the world, somewhere. Maybe there was hope. _Maybe she backed away from the ledge and brushed her suicidal thoughts away before running to the police station as fast as she could with her long blonde hair flowing behind her._ The fact that she ran away due to strength was simply a figment of her imagination. Really, she was frozen with fear on the overpass and was afraid to get down. Luckily, her fear of drowning was much bigger than her fear of heights. She couldn't swim to save her life, whereas she could stand on a high surface for a few minutes without freaking out. Now, she was way past freaking out; she'd moved on to the brink of insanity.

She saw police cars and ambulances below her. A man was climbing up a ladder and she put her hands up to stop him. In her moment of panic, she forgot about appearances. She shook her head and ran down the steps, all the way to the ground. She didn't want to attract attention, but she'd already made the mistake of doing so. It was known that she could only see shadows, so hopefully, her husband wouldn't be too angry.

Her sunglasses were sliding down her nose and she stopped to gasp for breath. She heard people talking all around her. It would be on the news. The seemingly high-class beauty who was perfectly happy despite her two disabilities, tried to end her life. Nobody knew why. She was Whitaker Berman's wife, for Christ sakes. Who wouldn't be happy with a handsome and friendly guy like him? It just didn't make sense.

"Whitney?" _His_ voice startled her. She jumped and was afraid to look behind her. He hugged her tightly and kissed her cheek. "Damn it, don't ever do that to me again! I swear to God, I was so worried about you!"

Reporters were crowding around them now, and she felt his grip grow painfully stronger. "Alright, we need some privacy!" he yelled at the crowd. "You can see she's all right! If anyone puts this on the news, I will sue them!"

That seemed to scare everyone away.

She shivered in his grasp. "I'm sorry, Whitaker. I don't know what I was thinking."

He roughly shoved her into his car and glared at her. She shrank into herself as he drove them home. They lived away from society to not risk any neighbors reporting him to the police. He would shoot a witness anyway, she knew that, but he still wanted to protect himself, in case a witness outsmarted him.

"You embarrassed me, you fucking whore!" he ranted at her. "It's bad enough that the public knows you've got Helen Keller syndrome, minus the deafness, but now they know you're bipolar! What the hell else is wrong with you? You know we are the most popular couple in San Francisco. You know that people pity you and envy you at the same time. You smile and wave at them, but you're unavailable because you belong to me! My friends are yours. My house is yours. I buy you everything you've ever wanted, and this is what I get in return?" He swung his fist into her face and her head hit the side window. She was dizzy and she could feel blood seeping out of the flesh below her eye. "Fuck you, woman!"

She knew what was coming. It wasn't just the usual nightly beating and rape; it would be like all the other times she tried to run away. He would act like a gentleman to her, make her serve him and his friends and then drug her with an alcoholic beverage while he let his friends, a disgusting gang, have turns with her."Shax". "Dragon". Gabriel. Roger. "Zile". She didn't know why she even bothered thinking about getting out. It would be impossible, since gossip spread about her and him and he knew everyone and whoever saw her in a dangerous situation would tell him. She had once left the house while he was on a business trip, and his secretary ratted her out. She had once broken the tracking device he kept on various places of her body, and it shocked her so she couldn't move for a week. She had seen her sisters at Quake and UC Berkeley, but, of course, they had not recognized her. Her disguise was flawless and her husband unknown to them. More than once she inwardly kicked herself for having never mentioned a word about him to them and then eloping. Now, because of that stupid mistake, all they saw was a handsome man with his wife. They never saw their sister and neither did anyone else. She knew there was no way out after three failed attempts. Even her sisters couldn't save her.

She found herself naked and locked in a basement hours later with duct tape around her mouth and her wrists and ankles bound with ropes. To ensure that she would never leave him again, he chained her to a pole in the basement. She cried desperately and struggled, but it was no use. She was trapped.

...

"How did you get away from her?" Darryl Morris asked his partner.

"It was easy. I finally got up the courage to control that bitch and break up with her. I was surprised she let me leave her. Then again, she threatened to ruin my career by telling everyone I was forcing her to have a child. She hates kids, but I would like one. That's a deal breaker for me; the woman I fall for has to love children. She is not fit to be a parent, anyway. She always seemed too evil to be nurturing and kind. JadeD'Mon lives up to her last name."

"Why would you go out with a woman with that kind of last name, anyway? It's so foreboding."

"She was desirable at first. I thought she loved me. She was my second wife after Susan, who dumped me in Portland and moved back here, but I have a feeling Jade had something to do with that. All she wanted was sex, no strings attached."

"The divorce is final, then?"

"Our lawyer thought it was best that I put a restraining order on her because she would follow me to work, call me every five seconds, and hurt herself so she could tell people that I was abusive. She was psycho, so I had to put a restraining order on her. I haven't heard from her since she ended up in the insanity ward."

"Thank God."

"Now, we've got some more cases to solve, right?."

"You are so out of the loop, Trudeau."

"Three years of being in a bad marriage does do that to you."

"You should have just tried clearing things up with Susan and gotten rid of that goddamn-"

"Thank you for pointing out my mistakes, buddy."

The men were driving down the road darkened by late night shadows, when they saw a man setting fire on pieces of paper that were coming off of tree trunks and metal poles.

"You better go check that out, Andy. That is not normal what he's doing...he's destroying missing person signs!"

"He's gonna get arrested for arson." Andy turned on the police sirens and the arsonist stopped in his tracks. He dropped the match, stomped on it, sprinted to his car with the burnt pieces of paper in his hands, and sped away. Andy and Darryl quickly followed him to an empty area with a single house. They were quick to recognize the house as Whitaker Berman's. He was, after all, the wealthiest banker in the city. So why then would he feel the need to commit a crime?

"When Berman goes in, we knock," Darryl told Andy.

"How could anyone look up to him?" Andy asked himself, but Darryl answered anyway.

"Probably this city is too damn naive to see his true colors."

"To me, he's just a stuck up bastard dying for attention and using his poor wife to get it all." Andy groaned and they prepared to arrest this guy.

"People are instantly attracted to a blonde, blind-mute woman. They want to help her, and they want to impress him. So they try getting close to her, but all anyone knows about her is that her name is Whitney Berman. She just sits next to him with this..."

"Fake smile," Andy finished for his friend. "Her world is dark. She's got a pompous ass for a husband and he's the only one who really talks to her. He doesn't seem to let anyone else in their lives."

They knocked on his door, and Whitaker let them in with a smirk. "Evening, officers, what can I do for you?"

"You're under arrest for arson," Andy muttered.

"I didn't even see you guys!"

Darryl ignored him. "Are you intoxicated?"

"What?" he spluttered. "For fucks sake, no!"

They heard thumping in one of the rooms below and then a scream. It was a woman's shrill shriek that echoed throughout the house. The banging continued while the inspectors looked at Whitaker quizzically.

"Where is your wife?" Andy asked.

Whitaker suddenly got defensive. "In the basement! She's trying to find something and she must have felt a rodent or whatever."

"Aren't you gonna go help her?" Darryl asked.

"I thought she was mute," Andy said plainly.

"She is, but she can make noises. She figures things out on her own. Don't worry about her."

"Please help me," the woman faintly begged. "Oh God, please, please...I'm stuck down here..."

The voice was muffled and scratchy, like she had a cold or something was blocking her mouth, and talking at all did not fit Andy's or Darryl's definition of mute. She never spoke, but she was saying full sentences now. They saw Whitaker sweating and he took a few full swigs of his whiskey before he offered another explanation.

"She knows all the rooms in this house, even if she can't see. She's not completely mute, as you can tell, but that's her voice. It's like a sick person's."

Andy recognized the voice for some reason. "Mind if we meet her in person? I've been out of the state for quite a while, and Darryl has been so busy covering my shifts that I have no idea what she looks like. I've just heard nice things about her and she sounds...interesting."

"Get out!" Whitaker suddenly barked at them. "She can't use stairs and I need to help her, just get out for a minute!"

"I'll handle him, you check out the scene. This sounds bad, very bad," Darryl whispered.

"You think he kidnapped his own wife?"

"Hey, it happens. He was trying to get rid of the missing person papers, and there's a woman down there screaming her head off. The pieces connect."

"You can't go down there! She's scared of everyone except me! If you search my house, I can sue you!"

"No, you can't, because I have a search warrant." Andy held it up as proof.

Darryl handcuffed Berman and led him to the back of the cop car while Andy followed the whimpering sounds to a closed door.

He wanted to kick down the door, but so he wouldn't scare her, he unlocked it, felt around for a light switch, and walked down the stairs when he found one.

...

There were footfalls. Heavy footfalls. The kind that boots made when stomping down a staircase. A light was now on, and she squinted. When she saw the man's pant-covered legs emerge, she covered herself as best she could with her folded-up legs and held herself together. She leaned her forehead against the cool metal pole and her sunglasses clanked on it. Her back was facing the stranger and she was shaking all over.

"Don't hurt me..." she cried beneath the duct tape.

"Oh my God..." she heard behind her. Whoever it was took in a sharp breath of air. A calloused, warm hand softly touched her shoulder, and she yelped in surprise.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," the mystery man apologized. "I'm here to help you." He got in front of her and started unbinding her. He cut the ropes with a knife while staring at the ground intently. When she got one of her wrists free, she ripped the tape off her mouth. It stung like hell, but at least she could talk more clearly.

_Wait, she wasn't supposed to talk. This may have just been a trick, one of his friends she'd never met, was here to have his way with her, and he needed her unchained, but then why would he respect her privacy and have a certain familiarity to his tone of voice? Nothing made sense._

She clamped her mouth shut and continued breathing through her nose. He turned around and excused himself. Five minutes later, he came down with a blanket and covered her with it. He lifted her small body into his arms and carried her up the stairs. He sat her down on her bed and took his own place standing beside her.

"Where do you keep all of your clothes? I can help you pack up. My partner has already arrested your husband, so you're okay here, unless you'd rather stay somewhere else?"

Finally, she dared a look at his face. Tears slipped down her cheeks when she saw him. She hadn't seen him in ages, eleven years to be exact, and he was here, of all places. She knew then that she could expose her secret. She wriggled her arm out of the blanket he had her snuggled in and took off her sunglasses and wig in one move. His eyes widened and he put his fist to his mouth. Her sunglasses and wig were hiding two black eyes and a huge gash on her forehead. She had bruises all over her body and he wondered how anyone could hurt such a lovely, sweet woman.

"Halliwell Manor."

"Prue?" Andy asked incredulously while looking closer at her. She hid her face with her chest-length black hair self-consciously. He still was the most perfect man to ever live on this earth and his features were as handsome as she'd remembered. She, however, was a different person. She was now worthless and no longer beautiful. She didn't know why he was even still in the same room as her. She was humiliated at her appearance.

She didn't lift her head for quite a long time. He sighed with sadness at her pain.

"Prue, just look at me in my eyes."

"I can't," she said in one exhale. "Not after...what I've done."

"You didn't do anything."

"Right, I did nothing useful in this life. Our-" she gestured between herself and Andy "-relationship got fucked up because of me. My face and body are fucked up because I married him. My sisters think I'm a fuck up since I let them think I was dead. So yeah, I didn't do a goddamn thing," she said bitterly.

"That's not what I meant! We had a mutual breakup because I was going to police academy in Portland and you were off to college here. We just drifted apart, but fate brought us back together. You tried to move on with Whitaker because you thought he loved you. How were you supposed to know he was a bastard? Your sisters miss you more than anything, I can tell you that right now. In fact, I just saw your ex burning papers outside that were stapled to trees and taped to poles. I'm a police officer, I know a missing person sign when I see one."

"That's how you found me," she figured out aloud.

He nodded. "I admit...I have been wondering where you must have ventured off to after college."

"Piper and I lived in an apartment in North Beach and then I just moved back in with her at the manor where we grew up. Phoebe joined us when she was twenty. It's been five years since I last saw them." Prue hugged her knees to her chest. "Let's go see them...I want to get out of this nightmarish house...I can't stand it any longer."

"You should get dressed first." Andy gestured to her with a sheepish smile.

"Right..."

"Have you eaten anything in the last twelve hours?"

"Not much, why?"

"When I carried you, you felt weightless, and I was worried. Had he been trying to starve you to death?"

"That, and beat me to oblivion."

Andy gritted his teeth. "Shouldn't I take you to a doctor?"

"I'm fine, really. I never need a doctor, since he says my injuries are always healing themselves." Prue leaned back on her hands and let out a loud groan. "Oh god, it hurts everywhere," she said on the verge of tears. She bit her lip, but ended up making the cut bleed. "Oh, shit!" She buried her face into her knees and her shoulders jumped up and down while she sobbed. "I'm so sorry! You should just leave...I'm such a bad luck charm! I'm a horrible wife! No wonder he had to punish me! I deserved it...I killed my mom...I gave Grams her heart attack...nobody cares about me...I made him angry..." She screamed until her stomach hurt and balled her hands into fists. At this point, she was choking on her tears, which were streaming down her cheeks. "Andy, you don't need to look at me...please...I'm hopeless..."

Every word she said broke Andy's heart a little more. He felt a surge of anger towards her husband and hatred boiled in the pit of his stomach. He'd never had this much rage before, but right now, he was ready to follow Darryl to the station and kill Berman for doing this to his first love. He kicked the wall hard and imagined it was Berman.

"I'm sorry for making you so mad, Andy," a little voice said quietly. "I'm just so scared...if he finds you in here with me..."

He paused. "Prue, no, it's not you, I could never be mad at you. Let me get you some ice. My partner arrested your husband."

"Thank god," she said with relief filling her tone.

He dashed out of the room and returned with three bags of ice. Prue was already standing at her closet and looking for a clothing article while wincing at her hand movements.

"I'll help you pack your clothes. You need ice."

"What I need is something to wear that doesn't make me say 'ow' when I put it on!"

"What about a dress?"

Prue nodded silently and took the bags of ice from Andy. She rested her wrists on the bags and put a bag of ice over her whole face while laying down on the bed.

He pulled a cotton green dress out of her closet and set it down next to her. He stuffed a suitcase with all of her clothes and helped her sit up. He put the dress over her head and she slipped her arms through the sleeves. She threw the blanket aside as the skirt of the dress came down to her knees. She blushed because she knew she didn't have underpants on.

"It goes nicely with your eyes...brings out the bright green in them."

She nodded and gave him a small smile. "While I appreciate you doing all this for me, can I have some privacy?" She rolled off the bed and landed on her feet. He left and she put her underpants on while wincing.

"Alright, I'm finished," she announced rather awkwardly. She glanced around her room one last time as Andy came back in and shuddered involuntarily. She needed to get out. "You can take me to my sisters' house now."

"Will do." Andy wheeled the suitcase outside with Prue following him.

"Where's your car?"

A breeze whipped through the air and she shuddered.

"I guess Darryl took it and he hasn't come back yet."

"Who's he?"

"My partner. He arrested your, uh..."

"Ex husband," Prue finished with a roll of her eyes. "I know, you've told me before."

Darryl pulled up next to them and Andy sat in the backseat beside Prue. He opened the door for her, but she wasn't expecting he'd be sitting with her. She couldn't think of anything to say. The suitcase was in between them, which made them not so close together. That was both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because she didn't want to be touched by any men whatsoever. On the flip side it was bad because she felt like Andy could protect her if Darryl tried anything, but since he was blocked by the suitcase, he wouldn't be fast enough. After all, Andy was her savior. She was on edge until her house came into view. Thousands of memories came flooding back to her.

_Patty dropped three-year-old Piper off at nursery school and both her daughters were nervous about being separated from each other. Prue was only four, but since she'd be five before December, she was allowed to start kindergarten this year. _

_"Bye, sweetheart, I love you," Patty told Piper and showered her with kisses. Prue clung to her mother's leg and gave her little sister a one-armed hug. Both girls kissed and hugged their mother's stomach, which was holding their youngest sister._

_"Love you, sissy," Prue said in a wavering voice._

_"Love sissy too," Piper replied. "Hug again!"_

_Prue bent down to Piper's level and hugged her as tight as her little girl arms could go. "I'll miss you."_

_"Miss you more."_

_Patty smiled at her girls' interactions with tears in her eyes. "I've got to take Prue to school now. Grams will pick you up at noon when Prue's class is finished, okay, baby?" _

_Piper nodded. "Okay, Mommy!"_

_"Give me a kiss!" Patty knelt down alongside Prue._

_"Mwah!" Piper said aloud and gave her a wet kiss, and Patty pulled one of her pigtails. _

_"Now, give your big sissy one last kiss."_

_Piper kissed Prue's cheeks and wiped her eyes. "Bye, love you!"_

_Patty scooped up Prue and they waved at Piper while walking out the door. Prue didn't really think about anything else except Piper until she got into her classroom and had to greet the teacher._

_"Hello, Prue! How are you today?" she asked cheerily._

_"Hi," Prue mumbled grumpily._

_"Prue, say hi to your new teacher."_

_"I did."_

_"Politely, though, please. I'm sorry, she misses her sister..."_

_"It's totally understandable. Prue, you can sit right here. Would you like your mommy to stay until class starts?"_

_"Sure."_

_The door opened again and Officer Trudeau came in with his son, who was dressed up as a cowboy. "Freeze!" he yelled at two kids who were play fighting. He held up a toy gun. "Bang, you're a goner."_

_"Andy," his father scolded him, "don't start playing until you say hello to your new teacher."_

_"I just said the same thing to my daughter, except for it wasn't 'don't start playing', it was 'say hi to your new teacher politely.' Excuse us for having kids with bad manners. I should have expected it, though, it's her first day being apart from her little sister."_

_"I'm gonna be like you when I grow up, Daddy!" _

_The officer ruffled his son's hair. "Oh, poor girl."_

_"I'm Patty, by the way." They shook hands. "My daughter is over there, her name is Prue."_

_"This is Andy."_

_The teacher interrupted the introductions. "I think everyone is here. The only empty spots for you, Andy, are next to Prue and Susie."_

_"Eeew, I don't like boys, they have cooties!" a little blonde girl screeched._

_Prue wrinkled her nose. "That's not nice!"_

_Andy shrugged and went over to the seat next to Prue. "Hi, wanna play dress up today?"_

_"You're allowed to wear costumes to school? I thought I had to stop because I'm a big girl now, that's what Mommy said," Prue said sadly._

_"I never said you couldn't wear costumes, honey," Patty said and wrapped her arms around her daughter's shoulders. "Now, I will see you after school. You have fun, okay? I don't want to hear about any tantrums. Behave, my little one." She touched Prue's nose, which made the child giggle._

_"Okay, Mommy, love you, bye!"_

_"Promise?"_

_"I promise!"_

_Andy's father kissed the top of his son's head. "Don't be too rough with the girls, buddy."_

_"Daddy, if I'm gonna be a cop like you, I want to protect people, not hurt them!"_

_"Yeah, he won't hurt me. I'll kick him to the other side of the room! Ka-pow!" Prue mimicked an explosion sound and hit the bottom of her desk with her feet._

_"Girl power, all right, that's my sweetheart. Bye!" Both of the parents left the room and class began. The teacher clapped her hands and asked who knew the ABCs._

_"Are you kidding? That's easy!" Prue said, and Andy nodded in agreement._

_After that, the kids had to partner up and color a picture. _

_"Why are you drawing a sad face over the girls?" Andy asked Prue._

_Prue pointed to the stick figure with brown hair. "That's my sister. She's in preschool and she can't go here with me. I'm sad." She tapped her finger on the taller stick figure with black hair. "And that's me. We hold hands a lot. Sisters forever. And then we're gonna get another one soon. I don't know what she looks like yet."_

_"Well, my mommy and daddy always say to look on the sunny side. We're gonna be here for a long time and your sister can visit us."_

_"Mommy says she's gonna be here in two years. That's a long time." Prue sighed and put her chin in her hands._

_"You can see her your whole life, she's your sister forever. That's the sunny side."_

_"Oh yeah! Thanks, Andy!" Prue smiled and hugged him. "You're my best friend."_

_"So are you."_

_Eight years had passed and it was the middle school dance. Andy had asked Prue to it and she was nervous. She liked him and wanted to wear something pretty, but she didn't want to appear as if she was trying too hard to impress him. She wished her mother was here to help, but she wasn't. Penny, her grams, picked out a blouse and a long skirt for her, but it was too plain-looking. After hours of trying on clothes, she found the perfect outfit-a red sequined knee-length dress with spaghetti straps and a black cardigan. Penny took her to a beauty salon to get her hair, makeup, and nails done, since Prue said that's what the girls her age were doing these days._

_"Thanks, Grams," she said gratefully and hugged her._

_"Anything for my lovely granddaughter. Let me take a picture of you."_

_Prue smiled for the camera and then the phone rang. Piper and Phoebe rushed to get it, but Piper picked it up first._

_"Ooooh, it's a boy calling for Prue!" she said loudly with a giggle. "It's Andy!"_

_"Shh!" Prue whispered while she felt her face heat up. "Shut up!" _

_"Andy and Prue, sitting in a tree-" Phoebe started to sing, but Prue dragged her nine-year-old sister over to a couch and tickled her until she stopped talking and began to cackle hysterically._

_"Don't embarrass me! Piper, take care of her," Prue said exasperatedly. She hoped her makeup wasn't sweating off her face. Piper handed Prue the phone and laughed underneath the palm of her hand, so Prue pushed her away._

_"Andy, hi," she said quickly and turned her back on her sisters._

_"Hey, you ready? My dad's ready to take me to your house."_

_"I'm so ready I could burst! I'm sorry about that noise earlier, little sisters are annoying."_

_"It's okay. I'll see you soon! Bye!"_

_"Bye!"_

_Muffled laughter became loud as soon as Prue hung up the phone. She pointed at the both of them and growled. "You two! Out, now!"_

_"Uh, oh, we're in trouble..." Phoebe moaned._

_"At least it's just Andy. He's our childhood friend," Piper said and led Phoebe upstairs. "Come on, we can play a game and leave Prue alone."_

_"He's not just a friend," Prue muttered under her breath. "I love him."_

_It seemed that Andy felt the same way about her, the way they danced all night and came close to their first kiss, until a chaperone warned them about personal space and reminded them that they were thirteen, as if that was too young for romance to begin._

_That chaperone didn't know how close the two of them really were. They finally had their long-awaited kiss after Prue's cheerleading practice in freshman year of high school._

Prue blinked a few times, trying to snap herself back to the real world, where she and Andy were no longer that way anymore, and probably would never be again.

When they got to the manor, Andy led Prue to the door with her suitcase in his hand. His other hand was at the small of her back and he kept looking over at her. She took one careful step after another and went to ring the doorbell, but stopped in her tracks. Her whole body was shaking and she tried not to fall into him.

"What's wrong?"

"This whole thing seems...silly. They've all...moved on. I'm just a memory to them, I guess."

"They're still looking for you. You'll be their surprise."

"I'll hide behind you, ring the doorbell," she said nervously.

So he did. They heard the chime and then feet running. The big, colorful stained glass door swung open and a little girl stared up at Andy with huge, curious eyes.

"Who are you, mister?" she asked.

"Inspector Andrew Trudeau. Are your parents home?"

_Oh boy._ Prue mouthed to herself. _Keep it together_.

"Mommy! Daddy! Come quick! A inspector man is here to see you!" The little girl jumped up and down.

"Melinda, honey, who is it?" a woman called out.

Prue peeked around Andy and saw her sisters and an unknown man walking towards them. At once, her sisters' eyes grew as round as saucers.

"Andy! Long time, no see!" Piper greeted him. She put her hands on her daughter's shoulders. _Piper had bangs and she was single and shy the last time Prue was here. Now she was holding hands with a man, they had glistening diamond rings on their fingers symbolizing they were married, and a child was calling her 'mommy'. How did this happen?_

Phoebe was right behind them. She had hair the same length as Prue's but it was blonde. She, too, had a wedding band and a sleeping baby in her arms. "What brings you here tonight? Did you just join the force?" She shifted the baby more onto her hip so she could shake his hand.

"No, actually, I stumbled upon my first case just now. I was on the Portland police force until I met my ex wife three years ago. That was a disaster, so I came back here. I also brought someone with me, and she's here to stay." He guided Prue closer to the doorstep. "This who you were looking for?"

Piper and Phoebe gasped. "Prue?"


	2. Sisterly Reunions

**Thank you for beta'ing, ****SwiftyGirl7474, TVADDiCT11 and invisibleinkstains, and prereading, Aviva426!**

Piper clapped her hand over her mouth and she felt a lump in her throat. Tears were beginning to form, and her sisters' faces mirrored her own. "Are we dreaming?" she asked.

"If we are, I never want to wake up," Phoebe said.

Prue shook her head no. "I'm really and truly back. Nobody is dreaming. Andy caught my kidnapper."

Piper and Phoebe immediately formed a Prue sandwich and the three of them hugged. Their emotions were in overdrive, and they were crying on each other's shoulders.

"I missed you so much," Phoebe wept. "All those times I told you to leave me alone, I was just mad then, okay? I'm sorry that I gave you such a hard time...I didn't mean it..."

Prue laughed weakly. "I forgive you, baby."

"Oh, Prue, you're freezing to the touch!" Piper noticed aloud and sniffled a few times.

"Sorry, Prue, I would have given you my jacket if I had one on," Andy said guiltily.

"I know, Andy." They shared a look not missed by the sisters.

"What happened to you? Are you okay?" Phoebe asked.

It looked like Prue had been in a car wreck, but Piper knew it was the work of the bastard who took her in the middle of the night five years ago. She'd have to talk to her man and Andy in private about Prue's condition. She didn't want to make Prue feel uncomfortable.

"I'm fine," Prue said, but her eyes were glued to the floor.

"You have a ring?" Phoebe asked and pointed to the piece of jewelry.

"I've been so overwhelmed with emotions that I completely forgot...it's been a habit to wear this..." Prue pulled it off her finger and threw it into a nearby trash bin. "That felt _heavy_, I'm so glad to have it off!"

There was awkward silence, and then Piper cleared her throat. "So, um, Prue and Andy, this is my fiancé Leo," she put her arms around the blonde man, "and our daughter Melinda." She stroked the girl's brown hair. "Leo, this is my sister Prue and our longtime friend Andy."

Leo shook Prue and Andy's hands, and then they knelt down to Melinda's level.

"Hi there, sweetie," Prue said with a smile and wiped her eyes. "You look so much like your mommy."

"Are you my auntie?"

"Yes, I'm your auntie."

"Mommy talked about you a lot. She was really sad. Why is she sad now? You're here."

"Those are happy tears, Miss Melinda," Andy explained.

Melinda spun around. "Ohhh...you wanna see my room? It's really pretty!"

"Maybe they can see your room later, darling. Let them have a chance to meet Auntie Phoebe's husband and baby, okay?" Piper could see that Prue and Andy were both tired and she just wanted them to meet everyone as fast as possible.

"Okay, Mama!"

"Prue, Andy, up here!" Phoebe turned her baby girl so she could face the newcomers.

"Who is this cutie?" Andy asked.

"How old is she?" Prue wanted to know.

"Her name is Parker, and she's a few months old."

"Oh, hi!" Prue said to Parker in a quiet, silly voice.

"My husband is in the bathroom...oh, he just came out! This is Coop, you guys." Phoebe walked over to the brown-haired man and hugged him.

"Hey there!" He waved at the group and shook hands with Prue and Andy.

Piper looked over at her fiancé and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. Besides the fact that Prue had been beaten up, she also looked way too skinny for a woman her age and height. She needed to see a doctor, and Leo would be a good one for the moment. "Andy, can Leo and I speak to you privately for a second?"

"Sure. We'll be back, Prue." The inspector followed the couple into the living room where they wouldn't be heard by the others.

"Andy, how bad is she?" Piper asked. To Leo, she whispered that Andy was a cop, Inspector Trudeau.

"When I found her, she was locked in a basement and covered in bruises and scrapes. She doesn't appear to have any broken bones and I gave her some ice earlier. I asked her if she wanted to see a doctor, but she said no and that her wounds would go away on their own. I would still suggest a doctor for her, though, since who knows how far this guy went with her," Andy reported.

"No matter what she tells you, she needs a doctor."

"Leo is a doctor, so he knows what he's talking about. He does his work here at home sometimes," Piper said.

"Just by looking at her, she is malnourished and badly hurt, but doesn't really need a hospital. We'll take care of her. She needs a lot of rest, ice, and food in her belly right away," Leo said. "You've done your job well, Inspector Trudeau."

"Leo, we're buddies now. You can call me Andy."

"I have no problem with that. Now, Piper's never mentioned you before...you were a friend of theirs?"

"I was Prue's boyfriend and the Halliwells' childhood friend over ten years ago, and then I lost touch with her and her sisters."

"It was only Prue who would talk about you sometimes. Phoebe and I didn't want to make her upset or anything."

Andy shoved his hands in his pockets and raised his eyebrows at Piper. "She talked about me? What did she say?"

"Nothing bad," Piper assured him. "I think it's time for us all to go upstairs since its late, especially for Melinda and Parker...and Prue needs her sleep. She's been through hell and back, I'm sure."

They walked back into the foyer when they overheard Phoebe and Prue talking to each other.

"Think you've got him under your spell."

"It's been eleven years, I don't think so." Prue's eyes widened and her cheeks flushed with embarrassment when she saw Piper, Leo, and Andy return. "Piper, what happened to your bangs?"

"I outgrew them..."

"And your hair is so long!" Piper giggled when Prue played with her hair. "It's grown at least eight inches!"

"Phoebe, you dyed your hair blonde, I love it!"

"Thank you."

"Did you finally meet a special someone?"

"Yeah, Coop is the one!" Phoebe said excitedly. "Oh, hey, guys!" The look on her face showed that she realized why Prue changed the subject so quickly.

_Sorry_, she mouthed at Prue, and Piper rolled her eyes at the fact that Phoebe never failed to humiliate her oldest sister, even after years of not seeing her. She thanked her lucky stars that Andy didn't seem fazed by what was said between her sisters. Being the negotiator was sometimes difficult, but it was even harder to take a side when she loved both her sisters exactly the same but knew one was more right than the other. She was born in the middle and very used to it, but that didn't mean it wasn't annoying.

"Andy, you should get back home. I'll be okay here with my sisters," Prue said, relieving some of the tension in the room. "Thank you so much for everything." They embraced each other and Piper turned away to give them their privacy. She elbowed Phoebe as a sign to do the same.

"Good night, Prue, sweet dreams," Andy said, and Prue responded with, "You too."

The door closed, and then they faced Prue. She was just a bit livid and she tossed a glare at Phoebe. "Did you have to say that with him right in the next room? He might think I still love him, and I can't risk him knowing that I still have feelings for my high school boyfriend! I mean, how pathetic is that?"

"I'm sorry, Prue...you know me, the loudmouth."

"It's okay. I don't have the energy to fight anyway."

"Alright, let's get you to bed," Piper said and put her arms around Prue's shoulders.

"I'm afraid of falling asleep, because I don't want to be taken from my bed in the middle of the night. Can I take a shower first? I just want to wash...everything...off of me."

"Of course you can," Phoebe replied and linked her arm through Prue's.

They heard the shower water running while putting the kids to bed. Piper set Melinda in her crib after changing her diaper and kissed her on both cheeks. She and Leo dressed their daughter in pink footsie pajamas. Phoebe rushed into the nursery room with a flustered expression on her face.

"I feel so bad about what I did..."

"Don't worry, it's okay. I don't think Andy heard, and if he did, he didn't seem to think anything of it. Hey, let's make her a surprise breakfast in bed, her favorite, which is chocolate chip blueberry waffles, strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, and syrup. She needs to eat a lot, she needs to be doted on, and she loves that crap."

"Just us two?"

"That's right. I know she hates surprises, but she's been so badly damaged that she needs something good to happen on her first full day here. I will always remember today's date, April ninth." Phoebe looked confused until Piper pointed to her watch. "It's already midnight here, and she just got here. We should probably dispose of these and write out flyers that say she was found on April ninth, two thousand." Piper held up a wad of papers and they read the top line that was in all caps: _Have you seen me?_

_Last name: Halliwell_

_First name: Prudence_

_Last seen: October 25th, 1995_

_Age: 24_

_Gender: Female_

_Hair: Black_

_Eyes: Green_

_Height: 5'3"_

_Race: Caucasian _

_Date of Birth: October 28th, 1971_

_If found, please call 911 and bring her to 1329 Prescott St._

_Additional Information: She goes by Prue and has not called us or been seen since a few nights before her 25th birthday, and she was taken from her bed in the middle of the night._

Phoebe sighed with relief. "Glad we don't have to deal with those anymore."

"Me too. I'm just glad she's alive." They hugged each other tight.

"I remember this picture of her...it was taken on your graduation day. She was so happy for you...and I loved her smile in the picture."

"I did too."

"We gots to be quiet, the baby is sleeping!" Melinda piped up and pointed to her cousin lying in the crib next to her.

"Oh right, in the middle of all this, I completely forgot that Coop put the baby down for the night. Sorry, Linnie," Phoebe whispered, and Piper kissed her daughter goodnight.

"Night night, baby doll, I love you." Piper cooed at Melinda.

"Nighty night, Mommy, love you too!."

Phoebe placed a rag doll next to the little girl and kissed two fingers and laid them on her forehead, which made her smile and mumble something like, "Love Auntie Phoebe."

Piper turned on the purple, cloud-shaped nightlight in the room, shut off the light, and closed the door halfway. The light from the hallway was left on.

"She's two and a half now, you have got to get her a big girl bed soon," Phoebe commented as they left the room.

"Are you kidding? She's so tiny, I'm afraid of losing her in a bed...maybe when she's like, four. That's when I started sleeping in a bed."

"How do you remember that stuff?"

"Grams' stories, ones you weren't there for most of the time, because you thought you were too cool for family," Piper said matter-of-factly.

"Well, I've matured."

"I know you have."

Right before they went to bed, they checked up on Prue and went into her room to tell her good night and to make sure she wasn't having any panic attacks. She was sleeping soundly in her bed and when her sisters whispered a good night to her, she smiled. They hugged each other good night and went into their respective rooms.

"Piper, come here..." Leo already had his shirt off, and Piper grinned. She could remember their first time in bed, when they had talked for hours and then had sex. It was the most amazing thing she'd ever done with any man in her whole life. Their talk would be in her mind forever. It was the thing that started their relationship in the first place.

_She'd heard stories in the newspaper, that there was a car crash with two occupants inside, the Halliwell's handyman and his wife, and that the woman died on impact, but he just suffered from a mild concussion._

_"I kept thinking about what I could have done to save her, more than just CPR," Leo confessed to Piper with his chin propped in his hands as he laid on his side. She'd never seen this sensitive part of him before, and it made her want to hug him. "Lillian passed on way before her time, and she shouldn't have. I was the driver, you know, the controller of the car, and I couldn't stop her from dying. One minute, we're singing to our song, and the next, we're hit by a blinding light. That damn truck driver...but I should have been paying more attention! I should know there are drunk drivers on the road, especially after eleven at night! I'm training to become a doctor, I should be smart! They shouldn't have kicked me out of the army, because then I might have died before her! I was wounded and dropped from the war, but they could have let me keep fighting, then she'd still be alive!"_

_Piper reached up to stroke his face, to wipe his tears away, and she shushed him gently. "Stop blaming yourself for someone else's stupidity. You did everything you could. I have survivor guilt, too, you know. It happened in my freshman year of college. I had this friend, Mark, in high school, and I guess you could have called us two peas in a pod. One night when it was raining, this crazy psycho attacked him in a dark alley and killed him, one bullet, that's all it took to make him depart from the world. Sure, he was in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and I was angry at him for leaving me, but in the end, I blamed myself. I should have hung out with him that night...it was his birthday, and I wanted to take him out, but he wouldn't let me. He didn't want to celebrate his birthday, he just wanted to run away from home. I told him he could always be with me here. He never made it to eighteen, and I discovered that he had a lot of problems he never told me about. He always thought low of himself, and I thought I boosted his self-esteem enough, but I guess I didn't. I never told him this, but I loved him, Leo, he was the last thing I thought of when I closed my eyes every night, but I never got a chance to find out if he liked me the same way." She swallowed hard and let the tears fall. _

_"Of course he did, Piper, who couldn't love a sweet, caring girl like you?" Leo asked rhetorically. "You did nothing to cause his death, and I can understand why you were angry. I was angry with Lillian for leaving me...but then sadness took over. At the funeral, I could not say a speech. I couldn't say how much I loved her, because I was afraid I would just...break down in the middle of a sentence, or a word, even. So I just sat in the pews and cried while listening to others' speeches. I wondered how they could hold it together."_

_"At Mark's funeral, I did nothing but cry. I told my sisters that of course the guy I first fell for would have to die. I told them that I should just give up on romance, but they hugged me and took me to his grave all the time so I could place flowers by it and talk to him. Now, I can go there alone without crying hysterically."_

_"Lillian's grave is also decorated with flowers, and I spent a great deal of time with her every day. I tell her what I'm doing, and I just know she's having a good time in heaven."_

_Piper snuggled closer to him and let him put his arms around her so their bodies were fully touching. "You know, you're the first man I've loved since Mark. I had this image of him when I was sleeping...he told me he wanted to see me happy and move on with a nice, loving gentleman. I think you holding me is making him happy, and thank you for that."_

_"Right before Lillian died, she whispered to me to take care of myself and find a woman as good as she was. I bet she's smiling down at us now. You are my soul mate. We're two halves of a whole." Leo kissed her deeply and the kisses went further until he pulled a condom out of his pocket, and Piper knew __at last _she had found a man who adored her as much as she adored him. She just had to keep one thing to herself.

_Even though the safe sex felt good and the talk connected them more than ever before, she couldn't stop the nagging voice that kept going off in her head, but it silenced itself because she'd ignored it for so long. She would never talk about high school again to another man for as long as she lived._

Piper and Leo cuddled in bed together and then when all was quiet, they made love.

"Where have you been all my life?" he asked.

She smiled flirtatiously and rested her head on his chest. She glanced up for a split second and all of a sudden, she noticed something was off about their window. There was a strange noise outside, and she jumped.

"Honey, did you leave the window open? I love the window open when we have sex, because it cools us down."

"No, I didn't...it's open a crack, and I don't remember touching that-"

Piper screamed when her eyes landed on a slithering reptile that was traveling across their floor while hissing. She started to hyperventilate and pointed at the venomous creature. "Leo...Leo, there's a snake! Oh my god!" She threw the sheet over her body while trembling.

Leo bolted up in bed and grabbed the first blunt object he could find, which was his alarm clock, and he beat the snake until it was dead. Piper was breathing hard behind him and whimpering.

"How the hell did that get in here?" Leo grumbled.

"Did you kill it?" Piper asked worriedly.

"Yes, I did...I will be right back." Leo put his boxers back on, tossed the snake out the window, closed it, and exited the room.

At once, Prue and Phoebe ran into Piper and Leo's bedroom. Their eyes were full of fear.

"How did a snake get in your room?" Phoebe asked.

"I don't know," Piper said tearfully. "The window was opened, and we didn't open it!"

"That's really creepy...remember when our door was unlocked and someone let a dangerous dog in our house when we were in college? We all locked the doors before we left for school, oh my god, is it happening again? Weird shit happening in the middle of the night?" Prue looked towards the window with a terrified look in her eyes.

Leo burst into the room, and the women jumped slightly. "Nobody's out there. I checked outside and went around the back of the house, and what I'm guessing is that it was just a stupid prank and the perp ran away when they saw me waving the baseball bat around."

"Ooh, I would just love to get my hands on that little-" Piper stopped mid sentence and growled. "Fucking scaring me to death..."

"Are you okay now, baby?" Leo asked Piper. She nodded and held him close.

Her sisters kissed her on the head and went back to bed. The manor had long gone quiet when Prue's shriek broke through the silence.

"Let me go! Stop, please!"

"I've got to check on Prue." Piper quickly left her bed, slipped on her nightdress, and nearly bumped into Phoebe trying to get to Prue's room. They opened her door together and sat on either side of her bed. She was tossing and turning, and they were thankful it was just a nightmare and she hadn't been kidnapped again.

"Prue, sweetie, wake up, you're having a bad dream," Piper murmured and gently shook her. Phoebe stroked her hair and then Prue woke up sobbing.

"You're okay. We're all here." Phoebe soothed her. They both rubbed her back in calming circles.

"Now you're the ones who get to take care of me, and I couldn't feel any guiltier. I'm supposed to be the strong one..." she mumbled.

_Five year old Phoebe was crying. "Prue!" her shrill voice yelled out. "The Woogyman's gonna get me again! He's in the basement and he came up here!"_

_"Oh, Pheebs, there's no such thing as the Woogyman," Prue tried to reassure her baby sister as she half-jogged into Phoebe's room. _

_"I want a hug and you and Piper to read me Cinderella, that makes him go away! Grams said she made him go away already, but I still see him..."_

_"Let go of me!" they heard Piper scream. "I'm seven, I don't wanna die, no! No!"_

_Prue was only nine, but she knew how to console both her sisters from their nightmares. She had defeated the Nothing at six years old, by repeating the mantra her mother had taught her when she was having a bad dream: you're not real, you don't exist. The monster would fade away if children didn't believe in it. She half-dragged Phoebe out of her bed and to Piper's room. They all sat on the bed and Prue told them to repeat after her._

_"You have to say the monster's name for it to work. Try it with me. Who wants to go first?"_

_"Me!" both Piper and Phoebe shouted._

_"I guess we could all say it together. Close your eyes, imagine your monster."_

_Piper shut her eyes tight. "Go away, Wendigo, you don't scare me!"_

_"Not exactly. Mom always told me these two sentences; they worked right away. You are not real. You don't exist."_

_"Woogyman, you are not real, you don't exist!"_

_"Wendigo, you are not real, you don't exist!"_

_"Good, now repeat until you can't see him anymore."_

_After saying those sentences for about five minutes, the girls' faces lit up. "He's gone!"_

_Prue clapped her hands and looked up at the ceiling. "Thank you, Mommy, we love you!_

_She gathered her sisters in her arms. "How about we read Cinderella?"_

_"Yay!" Phoebe clapped her little hands._

_"Yeah!" Piper cheered._

"You always have been strong, Prue, and it's hard to see you this way, but now it's _our_ turn to protect _you_. Want us to stay here with you?" Piper asked, blinking back tears at the memory.

"No, it's okay, I'm sorry for waking you guys up."

"Are you sure?" Phoebe wondered aloud.

"Yeah, go sleep with your men."

"Good night, we love you!" Piper said and they hugged Prue.

"You too," Prue replied and fell back to sleep.

The next morning, Piper and Phoebe were up early. They wouldn't let Leo and Coop help them with breakfast, as this was from them to their sister. Piper mixed the dough while Phoebe handed her the ingredients. They both took a turn in spraying the whipped cream on top of the chocolate chip banana blueberry waffle and then drizzling it with syrup. As a final touch, they sliced strawberries and put the bite-sized pieces of fruit around the plate. It was hot and it looked delicious. They made their way up to Prue's bedroom.

"Here's to hoping she isn't up yet." Phoebe crossed her fingers.

"She had a rough night, I don't think she is," Piper assured her. They opened the door, and sat on her bed with her breakfast.

Prue stirred and opened her eyes slowly. "Something smells wonderful," she murmured with a grin. She looked at her breakfast with delight. "Oh my, you guys cooked my favorite breakfast for me? I haven't been this spoiled, since...I can't remember when! Thank you!"

"You're very welcome," Phoebe said, and handed Prue a fork so she could eat.

Later, the men came in with the kids and breakfast, and they gave their wives breakfast, too. After everyone ate, they casually watched the news while getting ready for the day, but a certain report stood out, about the wealthy banker Whitaker Berman and his arrest. Pictures showed on the screen while the newscaster spoke.

"The question still remains: where is his wife? What is a wig and a pair of sunglasses doing in their bedroom? Was the wife pretending to be blind, and if so, there must be nothing worse in the world than that."

The report showed Berman getting released to give his statement, and he said, "Whitney must have ran away when she realized her secret was out. She really played me because I thought she had two disabilities. When she took the wig off and started saying stuff and telling me she could see clearly, I was so heartbroken. Who would do that?"

"That stupid good-for-nothing asshole!" Prue yelled.

Everyone looked at her, confused.

"How could he say that? He's a criminal, if he's in jail, ya know...anyway, let's have girl talk."

Leo and Coop took that as their cue to leave the room and Prue turned off the television. She tucked a lock of black hair behind her ear. "So, how are you doing at Quake, Piper? Do you have a job yet, Phoebe?"

"I realized that my dream job was not working at Quake as a chef...but I still love to cook. I now own a club that I named P3, as a tribute to the power of three, Prue, Piper, and Phoebe."

"Attagirl," Prue said and hi-fived Piper.

"I actually went back to school. See, I quit in the middle when you left, since I couldn't concentrate on schoolwork when my big sister was missing. I'll be graduating soon, next spring, or the spring after. It depends how busy my life is with the baby and who knows, I may be expecting soon. I know Piper is."

Prue's jaw dropped. "Piper! You used to be so...not wild, did I miss _that_ much? When did you girls meet Leo and Coop?"

"Leo was our handyman, and we had to sneak around Phoebe. We have been together for two and a half years, ever since I was pregnant with Melinda. We used a condom our first time, and he was really sweet and all...he still is..." Piper's voice dropped to a whisper. "I never told him my secret."

"What secret?"

"You know, that I was a dork in high school."

"Why not?"

"My ex boyfriend, Dan, did not handle it well...we were next door neighbors, sometime after you were taken, Prue, and we dated for about a month or two before he broke it off."

_"They tortured me, Dan, especially Missy Campbell...and Prue was basically my only loyal protector. There was Mark, too, but they called him emo, and me Braceface. I had pimples, coke-bottle glasses, and braces, and high school was a nightmare. I just think, if it hadn't been for Prue..." Piper broke off into tears while Dan just stared at her. "Say something...anything..." She leaned into him closer for a kiss, but he pushed her off of him when she tried to scoot in his lap. _

_"Get off me, you disgust me! I don't want to know you anymore, you shouldn't have told me that you were Braceface! Missy was hot, and I wanted to date her, but she must have been busy dealing with your gross self!" Dan yelled at her. Piper gasped and her heart hurt. It felt like she'd been punched in the gut, and she heard him slam the door behind him. A few days later, his house was for sale._

"He broke up with me because I told him I used to be a dork in high school. It burns me to this day."

"Jerk!" Prue said angrily.

"It didn't help that he like-liked Missy Campbell, of all people, as if I didn't feel awkward enough already."

They gasped. "Double jerk!" Phoebe exclaimed.

"And he was a baseball player for the Seattle Mariners."

"Triple jerk!" the men hollered from the kitchen, and the sisters laughed.

"Men and their baseball," Phoebe groaned.

"It's like women with their shopping," Coop said back.

"Well, honey, if he still loved you when you were pregnant with Melinda and didn't leave you then he will accept your past." The sisters' voices went low again, since they didn't want Leo to hear.

"Yeah, she's right, big sis knows best," Phoebe muttered, and Prue smiled.

Phoebe gave Piper a warning look, her _don't tell_ look, and Piper just let Phoebe tell some of her story.

_Piper came home from work to find Phoebe laying on her bed, depressed. She'd never seen her little sister like this, and she was a bit frightened. _

_"Phoebe, talk to me, what's up?"_

_"I'm pregnant," she moaned. "Cole and I hooked up at this wild college party...Paige warned me that he was bad news...why can't I listen to my best friend? She's younger than me with less experience, and she still thought he was awful. When I told him I was having his baby, he told me to abort it or he'd walk out of my life forever. I chose to keep the baby...he never spoke to me again...I thought he loved me...I feel so alone..."_

_Piper sighed and hugged Phoebe. Prue always knew the right thing to say, and Piper wished she were with them at the moment. She had no idea what to do besides just lay there with Phoebe while listening to sad music. She then told Phoebe the story of her and Dan._

_"Why do we always get stuck with the losers?" Phoebe asked._

_"Maybe the universe is trying to teach us lessons. For you, it's not saying yes to a guy until you get married. For me, it's keeping embarrassing secrets hidden forever. We'll learn quickly, Phoebe, but now, we need to take a break from dating. Let's just be two sisters and go out for a night in the city, snack on ice cream, and watch chick flicks."_

_Phoebe wiped her wet cheeks with her sleeve. "Yeah, that would be fun."_

_A week later, Phoebe was experiencing great pain in her abdomen, so Piper took her to the doctor. She squeezed Piper's hand while listening to the dreadful news and watching blood run down her legs._

_"I'm so sorry to tell you this Miss Halliwell, but you miscarried."_

"This guy I met at college, Cole, didn't come to my twenty-first birthday party, when he said he would...and I just knew something was bothering him...I felt like I lost everything. How did I not see that coming? I wish I was psychic...anyway, this was just after Piper was heartbroken by Dan's rejection to her past, and we made a pact to swear off men until Piper met Leo and broke said pact. I didn't want them to date at all. When I found out they were dating in secret, I felt so betrayed, even more with Piper than with Cole."

"I'm sorry, Phoebe. At least you met Coop last year," Piper said apologetically. "They tied the knot before having Parker."

"Wow, you've never been the settling-down type. Things really _have_ changed."

"It helps that I fell for a marriage counselor, and Piper's with a handyman who fixed her heart along with this house."

"He's now going to be a doctor," Piper said proudly.

"Well, I need to job hunt. I don't want to be home alone all day. I don't feel safe being alone or around people who might take me back to my kidnapper..."

"You could always take our kids to daycare and help out there until you find a job," Phoebe said.

"Oh, I don't know...I may not be any good at that."

"You're excellent with kids, Prue. They're okay with volunteers, and you can even go with us in the morning so the teachers can meet you. It'll just be a part time job, like a babysitter, and you'll be around trustworthy people," Piper said.

"I don't trust myself to take care of kids," Prue admitted.

Piper and Phoebe looked at her sadly. She had a long road ahead of her, but they knew she would find her way. She needed help, though, and they'd be there for her every step she had to take to make herself heal.

It was a Saturday, and they had all day with her, and then Piper had to go to the club. Leo was working the night shift at the hospital, Phoebe and Coop were staying at home with the girls, and so it was only Prue who came with her to have a drink. When she was closing up, her phone rang, so she answered it.

"Hello?"

There were a few deep breaths and then the person hung up.

"Who was that?" Prue asked.

"Prank call."

"How annoying...at least your club is awesome!"

"Hell yeah, it is, let's go home."

They put their arms around each other and headed towards the car. They heard strange noises and the trees cast shadows on the empty parking lot, but they assumed it was just their imagination trying to run wild. They got into Piper's Jeep and started the drive back to the manor. They played loud music, sang along to the lyrics, and laughed with each other. Piper finally had her best friend with her again, and it seemed like Prue was having fun. All they had to do was keep each other free from harm.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: Aviva426, TVADDiCT11, pbyrond, SwiftyGirl7474, K.K. Fush, invisibleinkstains, ****carson34, semperfedelisr, and EmilyAmanda!**


	3. Cracked

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474, TVADDiCT11, invisibleinkstains, and Aviva426 for helping me with this story! **

Andy decided he would check up on Prue each night, just to make sure she was safe. He drove to the manor on his way home from work and rang the doorbell. Phoebe answered the door.

"Hey," she greeted him.

"Hey Phoebe, where's Prue? The house is quiet, which makes me worried."

"Oh, she just went out with Piper to the club P3. Piper is the manager there."

A Jeep drove up to the manor and parked itself behind Andy's, and he smiled when he saw Prue. The women got out of the car, locked the doors, and walked up the front steps.

"Andy, hi," Prue said. "You look relieved." She tried to hide her smile, but failed. She pursed her lips, and he was reminded of how cute she looked when she did that.

"I'm just glad things are back to normal, for you, anyway." _Not really for him and Prue._

Her smile faded and she flinched at his words. "Things aren't normal, because I jump every time there's a noise, I have horrifying flashbacks, I'm afraid of men-in fact, I hate them-and I don't feel like myself anymore. Though it's true that I'm with my sisters again, I'm not the Prue Halliwell that you knew in high school. You can't look after me anymore, it's not your job. My sisters are with me now, and I'm fine." She walked past him and up the stairs with a scowl on her face.

Piper and Phoebe sighed. Andy frowned and shook his head.

"I don't understand...she was so happy in the car...I thought I was hearing her laugh, her real one..." Piper said sadly.

"Today, she was pretty cheerful, too," Phoebe added. "Maybe she just needs her sisters right now."

"Did I say something, or do something?" Andy was puzzled. _Women can be so confusing_. "I mean, she flashed her pearly whites at me when she saw me. It was for a split second, but it was there."

"It could be that you said her life was back to normal. Yes, the Prue that we've always known is still here, but she's not the same as she was five years ago. She's gone from being a strong, stubborn, sassy woman, to a woman who's afraid of her own shadow. She needs protection and crumbles into your arms if you give it to her, and she only feels safe with her own gender, which means that the kidnapper was obviously male." Piper let him know. "Andy, she needs to testify. Whatever happened to her had to have been beyond a beating. You said she was locked in a basement with bruises and scrapes, well imagine what five years of that must have been like. I can't bear to think of her in that situation. If she gives her statement, this guy will be behind bars for life...I hope."

"You guys mind if I come over and tell her that myself? The daylight might also calm her. It's dark and she wasn't expecting me, so that may be another reason she didn't feel comfortable talking to me."

"Sure, come over tomorrow. Good night," Phoebe said, and the sisters closed the door behind them. He shuffled back to his car and wished that he'd never moved anywhere away from Prue. He also thought that if she ran after him and begged him not to leave, he would've changed his mind and stayed, anything for her. Then this whole thing would have never happened in the first place. They'd be married now with kids.

...

Prue regretted her choice to let go of Andy the day he left for Portland. Ashamed of herself and lonely, she let herself get into one bad relationship after another until she hit rock bottom. She'd turned down dates and her sisters called her picky, so to make them stop, she decided to accept one man's proposal, Roger's. When he dumped her, she was heavily romanced by his friend Whitaker, and they eloped. She snuck out of her bedroom window and went to Las Vegas with him. It was by far the biggest mistake she'd ever made, apart from not holding onto Andy. She wanted danger and Andy was too bland for her, or so she thought at the time. _Now look at where that had gotten her_.

She went into the bathroom and stripped herself. She leaned closer to her reflection in the mirror and rested her hands on the cracked drywall on either side of it. Her makeup she used for cover-up was starting to wear off.

Scars marked up her flesh, and she could really feel her bones through her skin. A reddish-purple bruise was on her cheek where _he'd_ slapped her days before. She looked tired, and she was. She lifted her bangs and smoothed them back so they would tangle into the rest of her coarse hair.

Prue sat down on the toilet and she examined herself. She'd felt an immense stabbing in her lower area ever since she was in the basement, but she didn't want to think about it, so she pushed it to the back of her mind until it hurt too much and she couldn't do that anymore. There were little bite marks there, _human_ bite marks. She wondered how such a tender and tiny area could have _that_ many wounds. She couldn't bear to look at herself any longer, so she got back up and prepared to bathe herself. She'd do it until she was clean.

She yawned and then stepped into the shower. She turned it on and immediately cowered in the corner when she felt the burning water on her flesh. It reminded her of the time _he_ threw boiling water on her for not cooking enough for him and his friends. She turned the knob slightly and tested the water. It was much too cold, but at least it soothed her wounds. She washed herself quickly until she started trembling. She turned off the water and then carefully patted herself dry. Some of her injuries were fresh and too sore to handle the softest of towels. She got herself dressed in her light pink nightgown and tiptoed to bed.

She used to love taking a bath because it soothed her, but now, all it did was give her nightmares, even when she wasn't sleeping.

_The feeling was suffocating, being immersed in the hot, sudsy waters. She couldn't even tell she was crying, since the water blended with her tears. She swallowed gallons and it hurt to cough. Her heart was slowing and she felt like she was on fire, the way his nails dug into her skin and his foot crushed hard on her throat. The life was escaping her with each second._

She jumped and sat bolt right up in her bed. She gasped shakily while she pressed her fingers to her temple. Her heartbeat was pounding way too fast for her liking. She wiped her tears away, pushed her hair back from her dampened face, and fell back onto her pillow. _She couldn't have such scary dreams like these anymore; she didn't want to wake up her sisters or make the kids cry with her screaming._ She crawled out of bed and rubbed her eyes from tiredness. She turned on her lamp and all of a sudden, she was in an exploring mood. She pushed open her closet door and dug through a pile of clothes that were in a box. This was her childhood bedroom, so she knew there would be things here that would remind her of happy occasions. She wanted to go to sleep with positive thoughts.

Prue sifted through the box that was marked _Andy and Prue _with a few pink hearts drawn around their names, and she began to cry, because she found all sorts of things from their relationship, such as flowers he'd given her, love notes from when they went away for vacations with their families, and a Giants sweatshirt he'd given her that she used to wear to bed when it was freezing and too late to call him. She also found one of his old green shirts he'd left behind with her, on purpose, presumably, for warm nights.

_"Hey Prue, let's go to a Giants game. My parents got tickets for us and your sisters."_

_"That sounds fun! Hey, Piper, Phoebe, you guys wanna go to a Giants game?" she called out, and they responded with a chorus of yeses and cheers. She laughed and said, "Count all three of us in."_

_"Sounds perfect, we'll get you Saturday at five. The game starts at seven."_

_Andy noticed Prue was cold later in the game, so he offered her his sweatshirt and let her keep it. She was fourteen, but she still knew this was true love, and she was experiencing it right here, right now._

Prue hugged his sweatshirt and shirt close to her body and inhaled. His scent was there and the feeling of him was there. She quickly changed out of her nightdress and into his clothes. They came down to her thighs, halfway to her knees, and she had never remembered feeling so protected in her whole life. She whispered a thanks to the heavens and shuffled back to bed. She tucked her legs under her layers of his clothing and had a peaceful sleep.

She only had one nightmare-one where Whitaker had thrown her down the stairs so she rolled over and over again- and she awoke with a loud and painful _thump_. She opened her eyes abruptly and checked her surroundings. She found herself on the floor with the sheets tangled around her limbs and when her sisters ran in with alarmed expressions on their faces, she blushed from embarrassment.

"Fell out of bed...tossing and turning too much, I guess," she muttered. "I'm okay."

Piper and Phoebe helped her up immediately and got her back into bed. She groaned as her ears rung from the bang her body had made on her hardwood floor. She was a bit dizzy, and her sisters must have noticed, because they were holding up two fingers and asking her how many fingers they were showing her. She said the correct amount, and they were pleased to know she really was okay. They bid her another goodnight and then all was quiet.

Prue wasn't the first one up like she used to be. Even the little girls were up before her, and she heard lively conversation outside her door. She'd missed out on giving everyone breakfast yesterday, so she knew she would have to do that today. She sat up with a stretch followed by a yawn. Sunlight poured into the room and she saw that it was already ten in the morning. After putting on her sweatpants, she stumbled to the bathroom, barely awake, and washed her face. She did her business without looking, scrubbed her hands with soap and water, and then wiped her wet hands on a towel.

The entire family was at the table, eating their breakfasts, and little Melinda toddled over to her. She put her hands on her hips and grinned mischievously. "Mornin', sleepyhead. That's what Mama calls Daddy when he won't wake up when he's 'apposed to at six-o-clock. You a sleepyhead like my daddy and my Unca Coop, but you slept for longer than them."

Prue chuckled and bent down. "Sorry, baby girl. Will you forgive me for being tired?"

Melinda tapped her chin and scrunched her eyebrows together. "What's the magic word, Auntie?"

"Will you _please_ forgive me for being tired? I had a bad dream."

"It's okay." Her mouth went into an 'O' shape. "Oh no! There's monsters under your bed too? Daddy can get them out for you if you want. He does that for me all the time! Also, Mommy said to tell them that they weren't real and they didn't exist. She told me that you said that a long time ago."

Prue looked up from the child and smiled at Piper and Phoebe. "Yes, I did say that. I should follow my own advice, huh?"

"Silly Auntie Prue!" Melinda giggled and ran back to Leo. "Daddy, make Auntie Prue's monsters under her bed go away forever and ever and ever! Please, pretty please, with sprinkles and whipped cream on top?"

The sisters' eyes glistened with unshed tears. Leo picked up his daughter and set her in his lap. "I'll try my best, Mel."

"Yay! Hurry, do it now," she demanded.

"Melinda, sweetie, your aunt's monsters will take longer to leave this house, since she's a grownup. We all have to be very patient. Can you please promise me that you will calmly wait for them to go away?" Piper asked her daughter.

"I pwomise." Melinda nodded and made her brown ringlets bob up and down while she bounced in her father's lap.

"Thank you," everyone responded in unison.

Phoebe continued to feed Parker. "You are such a good little niece, Linnie-loo-loo. You'll grow up to be as gorgeous and as caring as your mother."

"And of course, your aunts," Coop added and gave Phoebe a kiss on her cheek.

Seeing Melinda struck a memory in Prue. She had babysat for a little boy named Max when she was a teenager.

_"I miss my mommy," the child cried._

_"I know how you feel," she sympathized with Max. "I lost mine when I was eight. My sisters barely remember her. You know what, though?"_

_"What?"_

_"Our mommies are in Heaven and watching over us. They're like angels."_

_"Angels?"_

_"Yes, angels." She gave him a hug. "Ready to go to beddy-bye now?"_

_Max hugged her and grabbed his teddy bear. "Night night."_

_"Don't let the bed bugs bite," she told him and kissed his forehead._

_"Prue!" he called for her as she was about to leave the room. She turned around and smiled at him._

_"Hm?"_

_"I wish you were my mommy."_

"I can take the girls to nursery school and babysit them," Prue blurted out confidently. "Just had a flashback of when I took care of that kid Max Franklin. I guess I did pretty well, because he said he wished I was his mom. I don't know if I'd make a great mom, but I must be a fantastic babysitter."

"That's a step in the right direction, we are so proud of you," Phoebe congratulated her, and Piper nodded in agreement. They squeezed Prue's hands and she smiled down at her plate.

...

At about two in the afternoon, Andy took a trip to In and Out Burger, with thoughts of wanting to surprise Prue with lunch. Darryl was with him.

"That for me?" he asked teasingly with a smirk. "Or is it for your Juliet?"

"I'm going to try to get her to give her statement soon. Prue and I go way back, so far back that I remember her usual when we used to get burgers." Andy set the bags in his lap. "Halliwell Manor, go."

Darryl started to drive. "You really care about this girl, don't you?"

"I do, man. I want to personally put this guy on death row and then beat him to a pulp so that he _wants_ to die." Andy gritted his teeth. "That bastard changed her. Last night, she looked scared out of her mind...she wouldn't even talk to me."

"Then what makes you think she'll accept lunch, never mind standing up in court and testifying against Berman?"

"Maybe when it's light outside and she's with her sisters, she'll feel better about talking to me."

"This case is personal for you, so I think I should take it. Look, Andy, I know that you want to do everything in your power to help her, and you can, but at a personal level. I can tell her the hard facts about needing to testify and you can just listen. You're on a first name basis with the woman, and trust me, buisness and leisure don't mix. My wife doesn't call me Inspector Morris, she calls me Darryl. If something happened to her, I would have you take the case, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, if Prue called me Inspector Trudeau, it would seem strange. Thanks for taking this one for me, buddy."

"Anytime," Darryl responded and pulled up to the house. They got out of the car and knocked on the door.

...

_"Bitch, make something for dinner!" Whitaker shouted at Prue and kicked her in the side. She collapsed to the floor and held herself while trying not to cry. A glass broke over her and tiny shards rained down on her._

The smoke alarm went off as Prue shrieked through her panic. She had been making chicken for lunch, but since it was the first time she was cooking something bigger than breakfast since her life with _him_, she couldn't concentrate on the task at hand. "Ow!" The sparks from the flames were rising higher and higher until the whole frying pan was on fire. She waved her arms everywhere and sent a dish flying. When it hit the floor, it cracked into millions of pieces. The kids were screaming and their parents carried them away from the kitchen while she poured cupful after cupful of water into the pan. The hissing steam rose up to the ceiling. "Shit, fuck, every curse word in the dictionary!" she swore at herself. "Piper, Phoebe!" A second later, a small hole formed at the bottom of her sweatpants, no matter how many times her sisters tried to beat the flame with a dishrag.

Prue started to cry and place her hand firmly over where the scorching area was. Piper turned off the stove and got some ice from the freezer. She held it to the red burn and instructed Prue to sit down.

"I'll take care of it, don't worry."

"I've ruined lunch..." Pain and humiliation crossed over Prue's face.

"We can still have potatoes," Phoebe said as she tossed the black chicken into the sink and put it down the garbage disposal. She put on oven mitts and soaked the pan with hot water so the burnt bits could come off later when it cooled down. "Do we have more meat?"

The question went unanswered as the doorbell rang, and Leo went to get it. "Andy, and...?"

"Inspector Morris, sir. I hope you're not too busy...is Prue home?"

"Something burning?" Andy asked worriedly.

"The girls are taking care of it, please come in," Leo invited them.

"Oh no! Auntie Prue got an owie! Mommy, Mommy, it's Andy and another inspector person!" Melinda announced as she ran into the kitchen. "They wanna see Auntie Prue!" She jumped up and down in place a few times.

Prue stood up from where she was sitting and limped over to Andy. The ice was left on the floor while she made her way towards him. He stopped himself in the middle of a sentence when he saw Prue. "I bought you cheeseburgers and fries...and I guess I came at just the right time."

"Uh, thanks, Andy, but I screwed up the chicken...I'm sorry."

"We all make mistakes; it's perfectly normal. Anyway, would you mind if my partner and I spoke to you for a minute, just you by yourself?"

Prue picked at her cuticles, which was a habit she did when she was nervous. "Um, okay. That would be fine, sure. I-I mean, I haven't eaten or anything, but...but be back later," she stammered through her speech. She quickly followed Andy and his partner into a secluded room and they sat down at a table. "Are you sure nobody can hear us?"

"They can't if they don't listen in," Andy answered her. "You probably have an inkling of why we're here." He handed her a cheeseburger and a bag of fries. "We'll eat, he'll talk."

Prue took a bite and braced herself for what she was about to hear. They ate their food while the other inspector introduced himself to her.

"My name is Darryl Morris, but you can call me Inspector Morris, if that makes you feel more comfortable. I'm investigating the Whitaker Berman case, and Andy here tells me that you two knew each other quite a while ago, is that correct?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Would you like me to call you Prue or Miss Halliwell? Whatever you prefer."

"Prue's fine."

"Now, Prue, I know that you were Whitney Berman, and the world is asking where in God's name this woman is. How long were you living with this violent man?"

"Five years," she said tersely. She blew out a big breath and ate some more to calm herself down. She didn't want to cry while eating.

"Before I ask any more questions, I need to explain things a little better. Andy can't work on your case, since he knows you inside and out. It's too personal for him, and feelings would get in the way of information that needs to be known. He won't want to force you to say anything you don't want to say." Her heart sank and she was crestfallen. "I'm sorry, Prue. If it makes you feel any better, I know you can win this case against Berman. We all know that what he did was wrong and despicable. If Andy gets too involved in this, he won't be able to control his emotions, and it may get him fired or your case thrown out. He can't even hold this guy down in court-only I can. However, he can find out what happens to this guy and help you with your statement. He can stand with you as a witness."

"My statement? What, I have to say something?" She narrowed her eyes at the men. "I don't even want to think about what happened, let alone talk about it. Do you know how upset that makes me? I mean, I haven't even told my sisters yet." Prue laughed humorlessly. "Why can't you just keep him in jail or shoot him yourself or something? You're cops and you want to protect me, well then, don't involve the victim in this shit. I never want to see that vicious animal again." She got up and tossed the rest of her fries at Andy. "Why didn't you say anything against his bull, huh? I thought you were on my side. You're lucky there wasn't any ketchup on those fries, or you would have had to throw away that goddamn fancy suit of yours because you can't wear stained clothes to work. Thanks a lot for ruining my day." Tears brimmed at her eyes as she stormed out the door angrily.

She ran to the kitchen and began to clean up. She swept the pieces of the broken dish into a dustpan and threw them in the garbage. She scrubbed the pan and then looked down at the largest slab of the cracked dish which represented her current state of mind. Prue turned on her heel and went to go upstairs but her sisters stopped her. She tried to get away, but they wouldn't let her.

...

Darryl looked at Andy with a defeated expression. "What the hell do we do now?"

"I'm going to make her feel better about this whole situation."

"Prue, what's wrong?" they heard someone outside ask.

He left the room to find her sitting on the bottom of the staircase with her sisters on either side of her, comforting her. She had her head in her hands and her elbows atop her knees.

"Andy's stupid partner is trying to force me to testify in court in front of thousands of people I don't know, half of them are his family and friends, and I just can't deal with that kind of pressure!" she explained meekly. "He said Andy couldn't just slit B-uh, the criminal's, throat. I mean, what the fuck? How is that fair? How hard is it to just throw someone in jail? We don't even have money for a lawyer!"

"Honey, let Andy help you. He'll be a witness since he actually saw what kind of environment you were living in. It will be too emotional for you guys if he takes your case." Piper leaned on Prue's shoulder.

Phoebe looped her arm through Prue's. "He'll be a witness and Piper and I will both be holding your hands through it all."

Andy walked toward them, and Prue mumbled thickly, "Just go away."

"I know you're scared, Prue, I can see it in your eyes. I also know that you're mad at the world and I'm so sorry-"

Prue snapped her head up and gave him the most menacing glare, but he didn't back down.

"Stop it, just stop it...you were trying to guilt me into doing things for you...trying to bribe me with fast food! Why did this have to happen to me, why the fuck me? Ugh!" she exploded. Angry tears slid down her cheeks. "You couldn't just take the case for me, huh? You're supposed to be my friend, but then you sic Darryl on me? What kind of friend is that? God, you just feel sorry for me! I'm that poor woman who got abused by her kidnapper for five years, that's all I am to you, so shut the fuck up with your stupid apologies," she said darkly. Her green eyes had never looked so fierce before, but Andy could see all the hurt behind them. He couldn't help but feel like a failure. Luckily, Phoebe spoke next before he could say anything else that would stab Prue in the heart.

"My friend knows a lawyer and with all of our money combined, we could hire one for you, Prue. Tell your story and ignore that bastard and his cronies. Stare at something above everyone's heads and just talk. All you have to do is act like you're in English class and you don't want people staring at you."

"Oh, stop making everything sound easier than it is, Phoebe! You always do that, you're a pro at it! Oh, I'm the great and rebellious Phoebe, I just got out of a goddamn shopping mall with billion dollar bracelets around my wrist, wow I love the five finger discount!"

"Prue," Piper interrupted her gently.

"You actually hurt my feelings, Prue, I'm not that way anymore. Don't bring that up, I'm not proud of how I was!" Phoebe was visibly upset.

"_Your_ feelings," Prue sneered. "You completely ignored mine. Don't try to tell me how I feel."

"I'm trying to help you, and you're being such a bitch!" Phoebe burst out.

"Try calling me a bitch again, and this time, add the words 'cunt-ass whore' because it sounds so cute to my ears!" Prue yelled. She would have hit Phoebe, if Andy hadn't restrained her arms.

"Let go of me! She needs a good, hard slap!"

"No, you don't want to hurt those who love you."

"She's gone off the deep end, Piper, just kill her," Prue snapped.

"Hey! Alright, you two, enough!" Piper cut in. Andy wondered when she would intervene, and he slowly removed his hands from Prue's arms. "Prue, Phoebe has a point. As for you, Phoebe, don't tell Prue how to feel, you've never had to or will have to stand up in court and explain to a room full of people how you were hit and kicked while you were down for five consecutive years in a row."

"Piper, you're siding against me too?" Prue demanded. "How dare you!"

"Prue, please, please, just consider what we're telling you," Andy calmly persuaded her. "I know you like to argue to win, and if you testify in court, this guy will definitely be put away for the rest of his life. He will lose, and you will automatically win. If you keep it bottled up inside you forever, you will never heal properly. You'll constantly have nightmares and panic attacks. I have worked on a ton of domestic violence cases before and one stood out in particular...a young woman, Daisy, she said, and I quote, "Ever since I spoke up in court, I have never felt so free and alive in my entire life. When I found out Alec was behind bars with a life sentence, I prepared to spread my wings.' Prue, don't you want to feel like that?"

"I want to fly," she said after a long period of silence.

"So does this mean you'll do it? You'll testify?" Piper asked hopefully.

"Yeah, it'll be like a ton of bricks lifting off my chest. Phoebe, you were right. I'm sorry for what I said earlier."

"Sisters again?"

"Sisters," Prue agreed and hugged Phoebe.

"I'm glad you guys have made up," Andy said.

"Yeah, we all need each other," Piper chimed in. They shared a group hug and included Andy. Darryl came in on the scene.

"Is she okay?"

"She's gonna speak against him in court, if that's what you mean," Andy reported.

"You guys are miracle workers. This guy is going down. Trudeau, we've got more business to attend to."

"Right behind you, partner. Bye, girls. Prue, thank you for going through all this. I know it's hard for you, but you are incredibly strong. You survived against all odds. Take comfort in the fact that your sisters and I are backing you up."

"You won this time, because it was three against one...at least he'll be in the slammer for life."

Andy gave each of them a hug and left the house with Darryl.

...

The next day, Prue got into her black BMW SUV while Piper and Phoebe strapped their girls in their carseats. Piper sat in the passenger seat and they waved goodbye to Phoebe, who was leaving for school. Prue put both hands on the wheel and a grin broke out across her face.

"What?"

"It just feels good to be behind the wheel again after all these years...I haven't lost my driving skills. Okay, take me to where Melinda and Parker go to daycare!"

Piper directed Prue there and then after handing the kids to Prue, they hugged. Melinda reached for Piper and wailed a little, which made Parker start crying, too.

"You'll see Mommy soon, but now you get to be with Auntie Prue, okay, baby? I love you!" Piper rained kisses on Melinda's face.

"Love, love, love," Melinda sang.

"Oh, thank you," Prue said gratefully.

"Hi, babies!" a dark-skinned woman called out. "Piper, is this your sister? Prue Halliwell? It's very nice to meet you, dear, I'm Sheila, Darryl's wife. You know him as Inspector Morris."

"Well, ain't it a small world!" Prue responded and shook Sheila's hand. "It's nice to meet you."

"You too. Bye, Piper!"

"Bye, Sheila, bye Prue," Piper said and gave them both hugs.

Sheila showed Prue around the place, which was cozy and colorful. Her first job was singing a song to the children and rolling balls to babies. While Sheila was changing one of the babies' diapers, Prue noticed a small boy sitting in a corner all by himself. He had a black eye and she frowned. She suspected some monster gave him that, but she didn't want to be right.

"Hey, buddy, what's your name?"

"Ramon Larsen."

"Ramon, why don't you go play with all the other kids? You look lost and lonely." _Like how she used to be._

"I'm a bad boy, nobody likes me. They said I look weird because I hurt myself all over. See?" He lifted up his shirt.

Prue gasped and covered her mouth in horror when she saw his fresh wounds. She held her hand out towards his, but he crawled away from her quickly. "No!" he hollered and started to throw a tantrum.

"I'm not going to hurt you, I swear-"

"What happened, Prue?" Sheila asked.

"I don't know! I tried to help this kid out and he just freaked when I came near him!"

"I've never seen him before, he must be just starting here. I didn't see his caretaker this morning."

"That's it, I'm calling Child Protective Services." Sheila gave her the number, and Prue rang them immediately.

"South Bay Social Services, how may I help you?" a woman on the other line answered.

"Yes, hi, I'd like to report child abuse. My name is Prue Halliwell and I'm volunteering at Adleberry Daycare. There's a little boy here, he's about four years old, and he's got bruises and red marks on his torso. It looks like someone beats him with a whip or a belt since he doesn't seem to like being touched, and he's awfully withdrawn, but I don't want to make any accusations."

"Did you see anyone come in with him?"

"I think he's new. Shelia Morris, the head teacher, told me she's never seen his parents before and he was just dropped off here by himself."

"We have to question his parents, what's his name?"

"Ramon Larsen."

"Someone will be dispatched immediately."

"Okay, thank you. Good bye," Prue said and hung up the phone. She saw that Sheila had effectively soothed Ramon and he was now trying to play with Melinda. They had Parker in a toy stroller.

"I'm the mommy. You the daddy. Parker the baby. She my cousin."

"I'm not going to play with a girl baby! You do it, mommy said boys can't play with a girl baby and girls can't play with a boy baby!"

Sheila was busy changing yet another diaper, so Prue went to settle the dispute, but there was a knock at the door. She opened it and a woman with long curly brown hair walked in. "Hi...Paige Matthews from Bay Area Social Services. Are you Prue Halliwell?"

"Yes, it's nice to meet you, Ms. Matthews."

"Thank you so much for reporting...we've seen Ramon with his alcoholic mom and stepdad. I had an inkling, but now you've confirmed my suspicions. Kristina lets her new husband deal with him because she thinks men should take care of only boys and women should only care for girls. Anton, the husband, is probably the one who takes him there. I'll pick him up now, okay? He'll go into foster care-"

"And I'll report the Larsens to Andy and-I mean, Inspector Trudeau and Inspector Morris," Prue finished.

"Do you know one of them personally?"

"Yeah, Andy...I should call him."

Melinda put her hands on her hips. "No, wrong! My mommy said we play with everybody! Right, Auntie Prue?"

"That's correct, baby one. Ramon, there's a lady from Child Protective Services here to see you. Hi, Ms. Matthews."

"Ms. Halliwell-"

"Prue."

"Call me Paige. Are you related to Phoebe?"

"Paige. Sorry, and yes, I'm her sister."

"Wow, she and I are best friends from college." They smiled at each other.

"Really? I hope to see you under better circumstances next time."

"Yeah, I can't fathom why people would do this to their children. Or anyone really." Paige approached Ramon and kneeled down next to him. She said something to him and ten minutes later, everyone watched on as Paige waved goodbye at Prue and carried Ramon to her green Volkswagen Beetle. He was kicking and screaming all the way while she attempted to assure him he would be okay and she would find him a loving family.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: TVADDiCT11, Emily, pbyrond, SwiftyGirl7474, invisibleinkstains, Marauderette96, and Aviva426!**


	4. Looking Back

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474 and invisibleinkstains for beta'ing and TVADDiCT11 for prereading!**

Right after the family had breakfast and Piper dropped their daughter off at the daycare center with Prue, Leo got into Piper's car and drove there to get her. When they switched seats, they turned the car toward the cemetery. It was just nine in the morning as the couple walked to the graveyard hand in hand. They turned to each other and smiled.

It was quiet in the graveyard, and they found their lost loves efficiently. He sat cross-legged in front of Lillian's headstone and touched it fondly. He caught a glance of Piper leaning back on her hands with her legs stretched out in front of her. Her long, beautiful tresses rustled in the wind, and he was mesmerized by her. She reminded him so much of his late wife.

"Mark, I come here with good news. My sister...you remember Prue, don't you? She came back to Phoebe and I a few nights ago. Can you believe that? Also, someone hurt her and now, she's going to testify against him in court. She is so scared but I know that she has Andy, Phoebe, and I. She's strong and will bounce back, I can feel it."

Leo waited for Piper to finish talking and then he began. "Lillian, today is my first day as a medical doctor. Hopefully I can keep everyone alive and find the cure for many diseases. I don't think I'll be able to deal with losing a patient. I'm feeling a little nervous but excited too. I'm nervous because I might do something wrong and cost someone their life. I'm nervous because I'll be away from my family a lot. I'm excited though, because this is my dream job and I've been told I would excel in it. I believe in myself enough to actually go through with this."

He knew Lillian was listening because the gentle breeze calmed him. He and Piper both looked up at the sky and blew kisses at it. He took his fiancée's hand in his own and kissed it. "Shall we go now, my darling?"

She nodded. "If you have to get to work, then yes."

They walked to her car and she drove him to the hospital. He didn't feel comfortable driving with others in the car ever since Lillian, so Piper took the wheel. He trusted her driving, since she was in total control of the car, unlike him. When they got there, she kissed him fully on the mouth. "Good luck, my hero."

"Thanks, babe," he said as he got out of the car. He always loved her soft and warm lips on his. She gave him the strength he needed to get through each day. She was the one who convinced him that he wasn't a murderer. He waved goodbye at her until her car was out of sight. Then he went inside to take whatever they had to throw at him.

...

After a few hours of stocking the club and cleaning it, Piper picked up Melinda and Parker. She overheard her daughter chattering with Prue.

"His mommy and daddy bad people," Melinda said to Prue almost regretfully. "Mommy nice. Daddy nice. You nice. Why bad people?"

"I have no idea, Linnie-pie."

"What bad people, where?" Piper asked her sister.

"Oh, hey, Piper! I just called Andy on this couple that abused their kid. Ramon, the poor guy, was here just now until Paige came to get him."

"I hope he's okay now."

"In her hands, I'm sure he is. She seems very capable."

"Well, I'm glad you met her. Maybe she can go with us to my class reunion. I need as many people to support me as possible."

"We need to take you on a shopping trip," Prue said. "You have no choice but to come with us."

"_We_?" Piper asked.

"Phoebe and I, of course! Tell her to ring Paige and invite her. I can't, because my shift is until three."

"Mommy!" Melinda squealed. Parker kicked her little legs.

"Hey, girly-girls, have you been nice to Auntie Prue?"

Parker gurgled and Melinda shouted, "Yay!" Piper took their answers to both be a yes.

"I wanna play with you," a little boy told Melinda.

"I go home. Mommy here. What your name? Me, Melinda."

"Mikey. Mommy here all day."

Piper and Prue smiled at the children's exchange. Sheila walked over to them. "Meet my son. He mostly plays with the boys but now he has decided girls don't have cooties, because I'm a girl and I don't have cooties."

"Good thinking, little man," Prue said and gave Mikey a thumbs up.

"Mommy, I like him," Melinda said with a giggle.

"No boys for you until you're thirty, missy," Piper joked as the kids hugged.

"Why does my daddy have a white poopie?" Melinda asked, which made the women laugh.

"I dunno! Ask him," Mikey answered her.

"Oh boy, let's go, little girl." Piper lifted up Melinda.

"Can you say bye bye?" Prue asked Parker in a baby voice. She picked up the infant's hand and waved goodbye to Melinda. "Bye bye, Melinda and Auntie Piper!"

"Bye, cute one," Piper said back.

After settling Melinda in the car, they parted ways. Piper said goodbye to Sheila and her son and Prue went back inside to play with the children.

Piper drove to Bay Area General Hospital. "We are going to visit Daddy today for lunch! How does that sound?"

"Yay, Daddy!" Melinda squealed excitedly and clapped her hands. "Me want candy."

"Maybe a nice nurse will have some at the front desk." She helped Melinda from her carseat and carried her halfway to the hospital until Melinda squirmed.

"Mommy, down!"

"Alright, alright," Piper said with a sigh. She set Melinda down and took hold of her hand. They were in a parking lot, so Piper was extra careful. She went inside the hospital and made a beeline towards the front desk. "Dr. Leo Wyatt, please."

"One second, ma'am." There were some lollipops on the counter so Piper took one and gave it to Melinda. She sucked on it happily and it kept her quiet for a few minutes. "Down the hall and to the right," the nurse informed Piper.

"Thank you."

...

Leo wheeled a young woman on a stretcher into her room. "Suicide attempt?" he asked Dr. Williamson.

"Looks like it. I called her parents and they're very worried. Not surprised though, this is Maggie Murphy, the unluckiest woman in San Francisco. Car accident, fire, and her brother's death...that is real bad luck."

"A little respect for our patient, eh?"

"Well, she is, you know..." the other doctor trailed off.

"Doesn't matter. I think of these patients like...what if it was my fiancée on that stretcher? What if it was my daughter or sisters in law?"

"You're always around women, no wonder you've gone soft."

Leo didn't really like his boss because he was such an idiot, but he couldn't exactly say that, especially not on his first day on the job. He simply huffed and rolled his eyes. He hooked Maggie up to a machine and prepared to make her arm and leg casts. She would also need a neck brace. _Her poor family_ he thought. _What must they be going through?_

At least his family was in good condition. He saw Piper round the corner and Melinda speed up ahead of her. The little girl wound her arms around his legs.

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

"Hey, there's my girls!" He scooped up Melinda and kissed Piper's lips. "How are you, honey?"

"I'm fine. Aren't you supposed to be on your lunch break?"

"Got an emergency," he said sadly. "Do you mind waiting? If you're too hungry, you can eat now."

"I didn't pack a lunch. I thought we'd eat it together and you'd share with me? Melinda already had hers at daycare."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Piper..."

"It's okay. Let's plan better next time."

"I'll share with you. It's in my medical bag, alright?"

"Thanks, you are an angel," Piper said and kissed his cheek.

"He's whipped," Dr. Williamson muttered, but Piper must have heard him since she sent him a dirty look behind his back. Leo just had to stifle a laugh. "Hey, lady, you can't be in here," Dr. Williamson said in a bored voice.

"Hey! I like watching my fiancé work!" Piper took a bite of Leo's sandwich.

"Careful, he's the boss...uh, Dr. Williamson, can Piper and Melinda please stay here, but in the waiting room?"

"Fine, but just concentrate on your work," the doctor grumbled

When he was finished operating on Maggie, he ate the other half of his sandwich and enjoyed his lunch break with Piper and Melinda in the waiting room.

Piper sat down with Melinda in her lap. "What happened to the woman in the cot?"

"She was hit with a stroke of bad luck," Leo said. "Ever since Lillian died, I'm devoted to saving as many lives as possible. That's why I became a doctor."

"Are you going to be able to make my class reunion?"

"I don't know, Piper, I've got ten to twelve hour workdays...let's hope today is ten."

Her face fell and he pressed his hand to her cheek. He kissed her lips tenderly and she smiled beneath the kiss. "It's okay if you can't go...I'll just hang out with my sisters and Paige."

"Daddy, come home with us!"

"Sweetie, he's working. You'll see him tonight when he gets home," Piper told their daughter. Leo ruffled her hair.

He felt terrible, but his job was going to keep him really busy. He was going to miss regularly playing hide-and-go-seek with Melinda and being with Piper all day. He also felt guilty that he might not be able to spend more time with his in-laws and participate in helping Prue. He wanted her to trust him, but if he wasn't around much, would she ever be able to?

"What are you thinking?" Piper asked and interrupted his thoughts.

"I'll miss the family...and how can I help you with Prue if I'm barely at home?"

"We'll miss you too. Whenever you can, start making friends with her just like you did with Coop, Phoebe, and Paige. Show her that you are a good man and you won't hurt her. I know you can do it."

"Break's over," Dr. Williamson said sternly.

"He's a meanie!" Melinda pointed to Leo's boss.

"I'm sorry, she's only two...see you later, Leo, I love you, honey!" Piper said quickly and turned to go.

He pulled her into his arms and deeply kissed her. "I love you too, sweetie!"

Then she picked up Melinda and they waved goodbye at him.

"Bye, Daddy!" Melinda shouted.

"Bye, pumpkin." Leo kissed the top of her head and then went back to his work.

...

Piper left the hospital and went to Phoebe's school. She hoped her sister was still having lunch so they could discuss the upcoming shopping trip.

"Where we goin' now, Mama?" Melinda asked.

"We are going to see Auntie Phoebe." Piper made her way to the courtyard with her little girl in hand. She saw Phoebe almost right away, sitting on a stone bench with her books sprawled out around her.

"Phoebe-oh my, that is a lot of work!"

"I know," she moaned. "It's totally worth getting my major in Psychology, though. I've always wanted to write love advice for the Bay Mirror. Hello there, Miss Linnie-loo-loo!" She gave Melinda a bear hug. "Oh, I could just eat her up!"

Piper ruffled Melinda's hair. "Got any plans for today besides accompanying me to my class reunion?"

"Paige and I are getting our hair done after school."

"Aw, can't you do that, like, tomorrow?"

"No, we made appointments today at three...why?"

"Prue wants to take us shopping! I need a hot outfit for tonight and we just all need some girl time! Paige can come too, so can you call her? Please?"

"Shopping? I'm down. How about we all go at four-thirty?" She took her phone out of her bag and prepared to dial Paige's number.

"Sure. Prue gets out of volunteering at three, so you two can meet us at the Westfield Mall."

"Sounds great! Hold on..." Phoebe held the phone up to her ear. "Hey, Paige, wanna go shopping at four-thirty with my sisters and I?" There was a pause and then Phoebe smiled. "Yay! I'm so glad you can make it...okay, see you soon! Bye!"

"She's also welcome to come to my class reunion."

"She'll go, she has a lot of time on her hands."

The bell rang and Phoebe packed up. "Time for my afternoon class. Bye, Lin." She poked Melinda's nose, slung her bag over her shoulder, and turned to go.

"What about me, don't I get at least a hug?" Piper asked.

"Oops, sorry!" Phoebe hugged Piper fast and tight. "Love you both!"

"Love you!" Melinda and Piper shouted in unison.

After they left the school, Piper took Melinda out for ice cream. They got a huge brownie sundae with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, Oreo ice cream, bananas, and whipped cream on top to share. Melinda played on a nearby playground to burn off her energy. Then they went back to the manor.

"Dowa! Dowa!" Melinda cried and hugged the television set. Piper giggled softly at her daughter's adorableness.

"I get it, you wanna watch Dora the Explorer." She turned on the television and found the channel it was on.

"Dowa again!" Melinda shrieked when she heard the show start up for the thousandth time in a row. She had just started watching it last week and wouldn't stop.

"Yes, you can watch it, but after this show, Mommy's gonna give you a bathikins."

"Splish splash!"

She sipped a bottle of water while watching her daughter eat and enjoy her show. Melinda got some drinks of Piper's water, as well as her own juice box.

When the show was over, Piper scooped up Melinda and walked up the stairs. She opened the bathroom door, closed it behind them, and set the small girl down on the floor. Piper knelt down on the floor so she could undress her daughter and put her into the bathtub. She ran the warm water and carefully placed Melinda inside. She squirted Cinderella soap into the tub so Melinda would have a bubble bath. Piper scrubbed her body and hair while trying not to get soaked. Fortunately, only her jeans suffered, but oh well. It was only water. Plus, the towel was on the floor so she could sop up the rest of the mess. Melinda began to play in the tub and make her toy ducks kiss each other. Piper grinned happily while she saw her daughter having fun.

When the water turned cold, Piper shut it off, drained it out, and dried Melinda's little body off with a towel. She bundled her daughter up, picked up the dirty clothes, threw them in the laundry room, and carried Melinda to her room.

"Fresh pajamas, just for my littlest one," Piper cooed while slipping pink footsie pajamas on Melinda. "All warmikins for your nap now, honey?"

"Ya!"

"Yeah? You like it?"

"Ya, Mama!"

Piper nuzzled noses with Melinda and they both giggled. She sat in the rocking chair with Melinda in her lap and read her a story, Goodnight Moon. The little girl was fast asleep against Piper's arm, so it was time to put her in her crib. After kissing the toddler's forehead, she placed her daughter on a soft green pillow and covered her in purple blankets. This would make up for the fact that she wouldn't be able to put her baby to sleep tonight because of the reunion.

"Good night, Melinda, I love you so much," she whispered, kissing two fingers and placing them on Melinda's nose. She turned on the purple moon nightlight, exited the room, quietly shut off the light, and closed the door, but not completely. She wanted some light to come into the room from the hallway. Kids hated the dark.

When Prue arrived home, Piper was watching television. She answered the door and gave her sister a hug. Prue jiggled Parker in her arms. "How are you, Piper? I'm ready to give Parker her nap so we can go shopping...have you called a sitter?"

"I thought Leo would be home but I guess his work ties him up all day now...maybe Coop?"

"He's not home! We can't go shopping!"

"Calm down, Prue, we have an hour and a half to find someone...oh, I hope Aviva won't be too upset about coming earlier. I'll have to let her know right now."

"Aviva?"

"Our regular babysitter. Sometimes she takes the kids to her own house when everyone is out on double dates."

"Ohh, I see."

"I hate his boss!" Piper complained out of the blue.

"Who's?"

"Leo's. His boss doesn't like me, I can tell."

"How can you tell?"

"He wanted to kick me out of the room as soon as I entered it with Melinda! It was Leo's lunch break, for God's sake! I hope it goes better tomorrow."

"Yeah, me too...how long are his work days now?"

"Forever and a day. I'll miss him..." Piper looked at Prue forlornly.

"Sweetie, it'll get better with time. Maybe they're just hard on the employees the first few days."

"I hope you're right," Piper told her big sister. "Before I forget, I'm going to call Aviva and ask her if she can come over earlier." She picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hello?" the teenager greeted her.

"Hi, Aviva, it's Piper. Would you mind very much babysitting Melinda and Parker at four instead of six? My sister came home from five years of being missing and she wants to take us shopping."

"No, that's fine, I'd love to babysit the girls! They're a fun pair. See you soon!"

Piper relaxed herself. "Oh, thank you so much."

"Anytime. See you soon!"

"Bye!"

"Do you want to do each other's hair and makeup while we wait for the others? They're meeting us there, but not until four-thirty. We'll leave here around four."

"So for the hair, down and curly?" Prue asked.

"Oh, yeah!" Piper said with a grin. "I want to show them a huge makeover."

"You've changed in a good way. We've switched personalities, no offense."

"None taken."

"I wonder if Andy's going...I got an invitation to attend, so maybe he did too."

"I got the invitation, not you," Piper corrected her. "You're just coming to be my backup. You can take Andy as your date."

"He's not my boyfriend," Prue said matter of factly. "This should just be a girls' night."

"Phoebe's bringing Coop," Piper countered. "Look, you and Andy were a thing in high school! You guys totally have to come together! You guys will have fun, trust me."

"Okay, then, at least you're not calling me picky," Prue said. _Piper wondered what she meant by that._ For the next hour, they curled and crimped each other's hair. They put on makeup and they were good to go.

"Can you see my bruises, black eyes, split lip, or the cut on my forehead?" Prue asked wearily.

Piper looked at her closely. "No, you're good. Me?"

"Pretty as a picture!"

"Thank you."

The doorbell rang and they knew it was Aviva, so they ran down the stairs and got the door.

"Hi, Piper!" Aviva said politely.

"Hi, Aviva, this is my sister, Prue."

The two shook hands. "It's nice to meet you," Aviva told her.

"Yeah, you too."

Piper rattled off instructions to the girl. "They're both napping and they should wake up in a half an hour. You know when we'll all be home...about ten-thirty. They have the same bedtime at seven, I just gave Melinda her bath, they eat dinner at six, and you know to call me or Phoebe if you need anything at all. You know what to do. Have fun!"

"You trust her?" Prue asked Piper uncertainly.

"Well, yeah. She's been taking care of the kids since Melinda was born. I know, she dresses Goth and wears dark makeup...but she has her reasons. She's still nice. She was badly influenced by her teacher Kali and it made her shut down. She's slowly building up confidence to make friends in school."

"Everyone has a story," Prue realized aloud. "How did you meet her?"

"She was at the same party that Phoebe was at in high school. Speaking of high school, let's go shopping for our clothes we're gonna wear to the reunion."

"That reminds me! Gotta call Andy. I hope he picks up..."

Piper smiled while Prue talked to Andy on the phone. "Andy, hi...it's me, Prue...sorry this is so last minute, but would you come with us to Piper's class reunion? I know that basketball star in you is dying to come out...you will? Oh, goody! Yeah, I'll see you then...bye!" She squealed, and Piper did a fist pump.

Piper drove to the Westfield Mall with Prue in the passenger seat. They searched for Phoebe and Paige until they spotted them sitting under an overhang near the mall. As they came closer to the girls, they noticed the drastic hair changes. "Phoebe, back to brown and with bangs this time? Paige, you're a redhead now?" Piper asked. "You two really go all out! I am honored that you did this for my high school reunion."

"Oh yeah, the reunion, Phoebe told me all about it! I am so there," Paige said excitedly. "Is red my color or what?"

"It looks adorable," Prue complimented her.

"It does, and Phoebe, your new haircut is so you," Piper chimed in.

"Thanks!" the younger women said in unison.

"I was getting sick of my long blonde hair, but I'm worried about you, Paige, you're p-" Phoebe began to say, but Paige stopped her.

"Ix-nay on the regnant-pay!"

"Sorry, but I really think its okay to talk about it quietly here. We're all girls and he's not around. He doesn't like to shop, remember? He's a parole officer."

"Hey, what's with the side-talking here?" Piper asked as they walked into a few stores, namely Forever 21 and H&M. "Okay, let's look around!"

"I broke up with my boyfriend Henry because he got me pregnant. I'm only a few weeks along, so hair dye won't harm the baby yet. I did it before he could break my heart," Paige whispered. "Will this dress be big enough to cover my belly?" She held up a red dress with cap sleeves and a deep V-neck.

"Make sure you don't drink too much or let anyone hurt you."

Paige rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mom, I know."

"You're pregnant-"

"I'm not even showing, don't worry about it," Paige said.

"Get it then, it might look really great on you. How's this sparkly ivory sweater for me? I've already got the light brown dress pants." She held it up to herself and showed her sisters and Paige.

"Classy," Piper said and gave Prue a thumbs up.

"I'm going for edgy," Phoebe told the bunch and rifled through the racks of dresses. She struggled to pull one out and when she succeeded, she raised her fist in triumph. "Got it," she proclaimed as she showed them the long black feathery dress with a sweetheart neckline. "We must try our selections on before we buy them! How are you doing, Piper?"

"I don't know what I want," Piper said nervously.

"You want to wow them. So, if I were you, I would pick...these black leather pants and this red sequined halter top. It shows a little belly, but it's awfully cute," Paige said and laid the outfit in Piper's hands. Her eyes widened.

"I'm not-"

Phoebe rolled her eyes and pushed Piper into the dressing room. "Try it on, it's worth a shot."

"Alright, but you're next, you evil people." Piper changed into the outfit and stared at herself in the mirror. She turned from side to side. "Wow! Leo is going to love me in this...and oooh, I look good! This is a yes." She split the curtains down the middle and stepped through them. "Girls, your opinions?"

"Well, damn, Paige, you did a wonderful job," Phoebe murmured.

"Hot mama," Paige giggled.

"That's a private outfit you should only save for Leo," Prue said. Her protective tone rang clear in her voice.

"I'm not showing anything naughty," Piper tried to assure her. "I know you want to keep me from having your experience, but I used to be a loser. There is nobody who desired me in high school, and the worst thing that could happen is they could think I'm a pathetic freak who's trying too hard. I'll wear a white cardigan to tone it down."

Prue crossed her arms over her chest. "Sounds like a plan. You would look really pretty. It's daring, for you, anyway."

"Thanks," Piper said. "Who's turn is it next?"

"Mine!" Phoebe raised her hand and practically ran into the dressing room. A few minutes later, she came out and spun around in the dress. Paige wolf-whistled and Piper nodded her approval.

"That's quite a lot of cleavage. You don't want to turn _too_ many heads."

"Prue, alright, relax! I have Coop to protect me. I have to tell you something, though, a girl does not get raped because of what she's wearing or what she looks like. She gets raped because animals can't control their instincts," Phoebe whispered. "The best thing we can do as young women is to stay out of dark places where we're alone and learn self-defense. I know your case is different and you're nervous as hell about your trial, but we are taking care of you. Don't worry about us at all."

"You guys are all younger than me! You're more innocent," Prue protested and threw her arms up in the air. "I want you to stay innocent, is that too much to ask?"

"No," Piper and Phoebe said at the same time. They hugged their sister and she kissed them on their cheeks.

"Too late," Paige said somberly. There was a shadow of darkness that crossed her face, but in a millisecond, it was gone and replaced by pure joy.

"What do you mean by that?" Piper asked their friend.

"Oh, forget it. It doesn't even matter. Move it, Phoebe, I gotta have a whack at this."

"Is it me or is she sounding a lot like Phoebe?" Prue asked Piper in a hushed voice.

"They have a very strong connection, so they've picked up each other's habits and ways of speaking," Piper explained. "Kinda like you and me."

"Aw, I knew you always idolized me," Prue said through a giggle and hugged Piper.

"We wanted to throw you a twenty fifth birthday bash, but we couldn't," Piper let Prue know.

"It's okay. We can have a thirtieth birthday bash for me."

_It was Piper who felt the most alone when Prue was gone, and it was Piper who felt the most alive when Prue returned. Their bond was very tight, ever since two-year-old Prue held an infant Piper on her teeny lap._

"Well?" Paige was asking. She smoothed her red dress over her curves.

"Yes, definitely," Phoebe said with a nod.

"Mm-hm," Piper agreed. "You look fabulous!"

"Not bad at all," Prue said. "I advise you to wear a necklace, though."

"I'll take that suggestion!" Paige exclaimed.

"Great, now me." Prue slipped the sweater over her head. "Imagine a black tank top under this and then my light brown dress pants. How do I look?"

"Elegant, feminine, and conservative all rolled into one-it's a perfect match for you," Phoebe complimented her.

"What if you dance and get too hot?" Paige asked. "I mean, it's pretty and everything..."

"I'm not going to dance. I'm just going to make sure nobody bothers Piper or you two, for that matter. I'm basically there to help out."

"Oh, you have to dance with us, Prue!" Piper said persuasively.

"Okay, fine, just for my little sisters and my new friend, I will."

All three of them hugged her and then they bought their clothes. The two cars brought them to the manor.

"There's Andy's car...I'm amazed he decided to come with us," Prue said. She fluffed out her hair. "Does my hair look nice?"

"I think he just wants to see you like the sweet guy he is," Piper said and poked Prue in the side. "You look fine."

"You could be right...but I don't think so. He just wants to go because he wants to see me dressed as a cheerleader, but that isn't gonna happen."

They giggled and got out of the car. "Hey, we beat the other two home," Piper noticed aloud. Prue knocked on the door, and Andy opened it, much to her surprise.

"Aviva let Coop and I in. She's on the phone with the hospital, and the babies started crying when the phone rang. She needed our help," Andy said before anyone could ask why he was in their house with supposedly nobody home.

"Oh...what's wrong?" Piper asked Aviva. The girl's eyes were apologetic.

"My Aunt Jackie fell down the stairs and I have to go and see her...it's an emergency."

"Oh dear," Piper said to herself. "What are we gonna do? I can't leave them home by themselves, but then again, we did just spend tons of money on these outfits..."

"I can take care of the kids," Coop offered. "One of them is mine, anyway, and the other is my niece."

"Well, there goes Phoebe's protector," Prue muttered helplessly.

"How about you take them to Darryl's house? He's got kids himself, and they can all play together," Andy suggested.

"You are a lifesaver, man." Coop patted Andy's back.

"No problem. I could tell you didn't want to be without Phoebe for a group gathering."

"Thank you so much, I really appreciate it," Piper told Andy. She took out some cash from her purse and handed a twenty dollar bill to Aviva. "Here you go, and I hope your aunt feels better soon."

The doorbell rang and Aviva left, just as Phoebe and Paige came in with bags in their hands. "Who was that?" Paige asked in confusion.

"Was that our babysitter? Oh, yes, it sure was!" Phoebe freaked.

"No, no, it's okay, Aviva had a family emergency...we'll take the kids to Darryl's. Andy, you know him well enough that you know where he lives, right?" Prue asked.

Andy nodded his head yes in affirmation. Phoebe pressed her hand against her heart. "Thank god...because I was looking forward to seeing you there, baby," she said to Coop.

They kissed and everyone said, "Awww..."

...

"I hope I didn't ruin any plans for you," the middle-aged woman said as Leo set her cast. It was about six-thirty, and he wanted to be there for Piper's class reunion. He wanted to surprise her, but there were so many people who needed his help. The woman, Jackie, must have noticed his disappointed facial expression. He looked longingly out the window and sighed.

"No, I'm alright. It's just...my fiancée has her class reunion and I can't be there for it."

Aviva rushed into the room. "Is she okay? I got the call and drove over as quick as possible." She hugged the woman and cried, "Aunt Jackie!"

Leo raised his eyebrows. "She's your aunt?"

"You two know each other?" Jackie asked.

"Yeah, she's my babysitter."

"Piper seemed really nervous and distraught," Aviva said remorsefully. "They had to bring the girls to Darryl's house since he has kids. Don't worry though, he's Andy's friend."

"No, no, that's fine, it's just...I think Piper needs me. My fiancée was going to her class reunion and I was operating on your aunt's broken leg."

"Then go to her," Jackie said kindly. I'm just on bed rest, and I know what to do: elevate my leg and no activities for six weeks. Aviva's gonna make sure I'm okay."

"I'll page Dr. Gordon," he said with relief and called a cab.

He arrived at the party late, about seven, and it was already in full swing. Piper was making a speech and he stood in the back so he wouldn't interrupt her beautiful voice. _That outfit was definitely going to be the death of him tonight._

"I have to admit, my high school years were not the best. I have to hand it to my big sister Prue. She was a cheerleader, class president, and homecoming queen with good grades. Even with all of that, she was still able to make time for me. She finished my speech when I was running for freshman class secretary. She was the best big sister anyone could ever ask for. I love you. Let's give it up for Prue Halliwell!" She raised a wine glass and drank from it. Everyone else copied her and cheered.

Prue smiled proudly. "Thanks, sis!"

"I cannot believe Dan and Missy are making out!" Phoebe said overdramatically.

"Whatever!" Piper yelled and laughed crazily.

For at least an hour or two, Leo was pushed and shoved around by the partygoers until he couldn't see Piper anymore.

People hooted and hollered wildly as Piper started doing a sexy bar dance. He could hardly believe his eyes, but some guy was trying to freak dance with her. She pushed him off of her. "Hey, Dan, I'm drunk, but I'm not that drunk! Get lost!" She slammed her foot into his chest and knocked this _Dan_ right off the bar table and Leo opened his arms so she could jump into them.

"Leo, you came!" she said and her eyes rolled back into her head. "Let's have sex over there!"

"You snooze, you loose!" Paige shouted at the man who Piper called Dan.

"Baby, you're drunk out of your mind, and I'm not about to take advantage of you like that," he told her warmly.

"Let's dance like them!" Piper said and pointed to Prue and Andy, who were also under the influence and dancing around and around in circles.

He let her pull him to the center of the floor because he loved her so much. He spun her around and she giggled. He smiled at the way her crimped hair flowed behind her, the way her face looked under the dim light, and the way that she was just so flawless. He wrapped her in his arms and she squeezed his hips with both her legs. Their lips molded into each other's and the room erupted into cheers. "Hey! I'm marrying him this summer!" she shouted gleefully. "I'm gonna be Mrs. Piper Wyatt!"

After another thirty minutes, she still hadn't had enough fun. He twirled her around the dance floor and a group had formed around them. He saw his friends and they were as happy as he was.

She ran for the toilet a good five minutes later, but she didn't get there in time. There was that Dan person again, standing with some woman by the girls' bathroom, and then Piper vomited all over their shoes. Her sisters noticed it too and they started laughing. Paige hi-fived Andy and Coop. Prue was the first one to say something.

"Well, she sure showed them!"

Leo couldn't hold in his laughter this time. He buckled over until he felt someone jump on his back. He held on tight to her leather clad legs and she kissed his neck. "Take me home, honey."

With that, Leo rounded up the group and when they were home, he carried her upstairs. He laid her down gently on their bed and tucked her in. He stroked his thumb across her cheeks and kissed her everywhere on her face.

"Good night, Piper. I love you, and I've missed you."

"Night," she slurred. "Love you too. You made my night."

"No, _you_ made _my_ night," he argued lightly.

She scrunched her nose. "You made my dream come true."

"It was amazing to see you let loose like that."

"Ohh, I bet it was," she said in a sultry voice. "You want me, don't you?"

He started kissing her while he held her close, and it lasted through the whole night until they were too tired to do anything but sleep.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: TVADDiCT11, pbyrond, Carly, invisibleinkstains, Emily, and SwiftyGirl7474!**


	5. Testimony

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474, TVADDiCT11, and invisibleinkstains for helping me with this story!**

Two weeks passed since Piper's class reunion, and it was suddenly twenty-four hours before Prue had to testify against the monster. Before dinner, she took a shower. She scrubbed her whole body with a loofah and massaged shampoo and conditioner into her hair until she was smelling fresh. Then she just sat in the tub and let the water run over her until it was cold. She tended to do that when harried. When she got out and wrapped a towel around herself, she opened the door and saw Piper waiting in line to take a shower. Her sister's hair was a mess and sweat glistened on her face and body.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I used up all the hot water!" Prue apologized right away.

"It's okay, it's okay...I'll take a quick, cool shower. Plus, this steam might help and I can bundle up in sweats afterwards. Then you and I can talk."

_Talk...talk about what?_ Prue nodded and left the bathroom so Piper could take her shower.

Prue and Piper were sitting across from each other on the couch in the conservatory. By the look on Piper's face, Prue could tell this was going to be a serious chat.

"I really want to know, what happened to you? Before you give your statement tomorrow, you should practice..."

Prue cut her off. "Piper, you're much easier to talk to than an unknown lawyer! It doesn't matter what I tell you...it'll still be very stressful in the courtroom."

_How would her sisters react, though? She felt the need to just spill it to Piper, but she couldn't quite get the words out._

"I know it'll be difficult. I know something horrible happened to you, and I want to help you."

"He-he kept me confined...you know how Andy found me, in that basement...well, that was my punishment for trying to escape for the millionth time in a row. You know how abusive relationships work...but we were happy once," Prue admitted warily.

Piper's eyes widened in sadness. "You experienced Stockholm's Syndrome?"

"Not...exactly. I can't explain it right now. I just need a hug."

Piper threw her arms around Prue and they squeezed each other tightly while they rocked from side to side. Phoebe later came in with spaghetti she made for dinner and the three of them ate it while watching television.

...

Andy knocked on the door of the manor, and Prue let him in. She was in a light blue top and gray sweatpants, her hair was in two braids, and she looked cozy and adorable.

"Andy, hi, I'm sorry I'm just in comfort wear..." she started but then stopped herself. "So, um, Piper was asking me what happened to me...should I tell her and Phoebe that I was Whitney Berman now, or tomorrow?"

"Whatever you feel most comfortable with."

"It's now or never," she sighed. "Piper, Phoebe, meeting in the living room!" Andy followed her to the couch and then her sisters came to stand on either side of her.

"Well, you'll find out sooner or later, I guess I'll tell you now. I'm Whitney Berman," Prue confessed. "I just didn't want you guys to get the nasty shock in the courtroom."

"What, no way!" Phoebe exclaimed.

"Oh my god, we saw you at Quake and Berkely University! Why didn't you pull us into the ladies' room at either of those places and show yourself?" Piper demanded.

"He followed me everywhere...even into the women's bathroom. I didn't get taken from my bed...I eloped, with Berman."

"Holy shit, Prue," Phoebe muttered and shook her head.

"There was no way out. I just wish I would have told you guys..."

"You had to protect yourself and you were frightened. Oh, you poor thing," Piper said and pulled Prue into a hug.

"I felt so powerless. That's what he told me all the time, that I was powerless, and a pathetic, good for nothing loser. I mean, I am...I couldn't even think of a way to escape."

"Don't talk so low about yourself," Andy told her. "Whitaker Berman is a useless piece of scum that will rot in a cell while you are living life with your family and friends all around you. People love you, and everyone will hate him once they know what he's really like. You're too good to the core to be thought of as a bad person."

"He's right, you know," Phoebe said and wrapped her arms around her big sisters.

"You know who's friends all participated in trying to rape and kill me, but then they wanted a body to fool around with, so my ex told them not to murder me. I can still hear his domineering voice in my head as he ordered me to do the most vile things for them...he liked to watch it..."

"I have to report every bit of this to Darryl. Who are Berman's friends, exactly?"

"Don't say his name, I'll tell Inspector Morris myself."

"How will you even find his friends?" Piper asked.

"I'll call Darryl and tell him to check his phone records." Andy used the Halliwells' phone to call his partner, and Darryl picked up on the first ring.

"Inspector Morris speaking."

"Hey, it's Andy, would you do me a favor? I need to know the names of every single one of Berman's friends because they also beat and raped Prue. We need to find these guys and put them in Berman's cell."

"I'll get right on it." Andy heard the clicking of keys and then Darryl started listing names. "Alright, family members...ask Prue if she ever met his family."

"Darryl wants to know if you ever met his family," Andy told Prue. She shook her head no.

"Just his friends."

"Just his friends, she says."

"I'll start naming the friends and rule out his family. So...first contact, Dragon."

"Dragon," Andy repeated, and Prue nodded. "That's one of them."

"Then we have...Gabriel."

"Gabriel."

"Yeah, he, Vince-otherwise known as Dragon-and Shax were the ones who especially wanted to kill me. They actually did try a few times."

"We got two more, Gabriel and Shax," Andy informed Darryl. "Earlier, she told me that Roger was a participant in these gang rapes."

"Got him, he's on Berman's contact list. Last is Zile."

"Zile."

"He wanted to marry me next, after...you know."

Andy cleared his throat. "Alright, is that all the friends?"

"Yes."

"She said that's all his friends."

"Thanks, so now I'll head out to arrest each and every one of them. See you guys tomorrow."

"Bye, see you."

"I'm really exhausted...can I go to bed now?" Prue wondered aloud.

"Of course, go ahead. You girls should all get lots of rest, since tomorrow will be a very long day," Andy recommended.

They took his advice and hugged him goodnight. Then he went home and prepared himself for his witness statement.

...

Prue got out a glass bowl and cracked a few eggs. She scrambled them and put them in the oiled pan. While they cooked, she made toast with honey and cinnamon on top. She put the eggs on a plate when they were finished and squirted them with ketchup. There were strawberries in the dish drainer, so she took those too. She completed her breakfast with a cup of orange juice. Then she sat down between Piper and Phoebe and started to eat. They stayed at the table and let her chew in silence. She kept herself busy so she wouldn't have to think about her trial where she would have to discuss her dark past.

Her sisters helped her pick out a conservative outfit so _his _lawyer wouldn't have the audacity to say Prue got raped because of how she was dressed. She wore a long black skirt down to her ankles and a blue blouse that was buttoned until her cleavage was concealed. It didn't settle her nerves, though.

An hour later, she, her sisters, and their significant others had arrived at the courtroom where they met Andy and sat down. Prue sat in between Piper and Andy, with Leo on the other side of Piper. Coop and Phoebe were next to Leo. Melinda and Parker were at Aviva's house, and Prue was glad they didn't have to be here, near the people who ruined her life. She heard a door open and Darryl was leading a line of men in orange with handcuffs on their wrists into the courtroom. She wanted to vomit when _they_ leered in her direction.

"I...I don't think I can handle this..." Prue gulped air and clutched the seat. "I'm going to faint when I go up there. I'm going to make an ass of myself...they're all going to laugh at me...and..." She trailed off and began to shiver.

Andy put his arm around her and rubbed soothing circles on her back to try calming her. She breathed in and out unsteadily. "Just breathe, Prue. You're doing so good."

"I...feel...so...sick...have you ever ran a marathon? That's how I feel. I need water. Now." Her voice was hoarse since her throat was so dry.

"I'll get some for you," Andy volunteered.

"Thank you."

"Hey Phoebe, looking good!" Roger jeered when Andy left the courtroom.

"Can it, Roger, you're lucky we're in front of cops, otherwise I would totally kick your ass. I have a black belt in karate. The only thing I would do is this." Phoebe flipped him off. Prue wanted to laugh, but she was afraid to, so she just looked away from her exes and their friends.

"Only Phoebe would be brave enough to say that to a criminal," Piper whispered to Prue.

Roger started towards Prue and her family, but Darryl held him back. "Nobody comes near Ms. Halliwell or her supporters. I hope I made myself very clear. Do not move until it is your turn to talk to her lawyer."

Andy returned with a cupful of water and handed it to Prue before sitting down. She sipped it and held the cup with two shaky hands. It wasn't long before the baliff told everyone to rise, so they did. Prue grabbed for Piper's hand, but her eyes blurred and she missed. She fell into Andy, but he caught her against his chest. When the judge sat down, everyone else could too.

"Order in the court, please! This is the case of Halliwell v. Berman. Ms. Prue Halliwell is testifying against Mr. Whitaker Berman."

Hearing _his _name again was too much for her, and she zoned out while the lawyers were speaking. It was only when someone hissed, "Oh great, that's Cole! Eewww!", that Prue decided to listen again.

"Oh, _him_," Piper said with disgust.

"...Mr. Larry Henderson, lawyer for Miss Halliwell."

The voices were going in and out, so she couldn't make out everything that the people were saying.

"...Mr. Cole Turner...Mr. Berman."

"Prue, they're calling you to the podium," she heard a man say. She felt someone help her up, _was it Andy_? She struggled to open her eyes and concentrate on walking in a straight line. _She should have never agreed to this._

"Please put your right hand on the Bible," a voice directed her, and she did. "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I do."

She sat across from _his _lawyer, whose name was apparently Cole, and she saw Andy standing a few feet away from her. She glanced up at the clock and the time didn't appear to have changed since she got there.

"How did you meet my client?"

Prue crossed her ankles and blinked in surprise. The question sped out of his mouth so fast that she could barely comprehend it. "How did I...you're asking me...how I met...him?" she stammered. Cole nodded, so she continued. "Um, well...I, uh...we..."

"Come on, out with it," Cole said callously.

"Museum of Natural History. I used to work there...he was friends with Roger...my ex fiancé."

"So, you cheated on him."

Prue noticed Andy glaring at Cole and then her eyes passed over her sisters, Leo, and Coop, who had the same angry expressions on their faces. "No! No, I did not. Roger broke up with me...and your client asked me out...a few days later."

"Why did you fall in love with him?"

"I...I thought...he was nice...I mean...up until...we got married. We eloped...I never told my sisters about him...because he had a dark side...but I didn't want them to worry. He really...acted like...he said...the right things, at the time. He said what I wanted to hear...and I believed him."

"When did you stop loving him?"

"When I climbed out the window to meet him...he had a...a blonde wig and sunglasses ready for me...in his car. He...he said we were starting...a new life. I told him...I told him that...I couldn't imagine a life...without my little sisters...but he said...he said 'who needs little sisters?'...and...and just...drove off in the dead of night. That's when I knew...he was trouble. I...I had to pretend...to be both blind...and mute...and named...Whitney Berman."

_She looked at herself in the mirror before her wedding and mumbled, "Why the hell am I doing this?"_

_The marriage ceremony was too long. The night was much worse. Prue was once again dressed in skimpy clothing until he ripped off all her clothes and she was exposed. Instinctively, she covered herself with her hands and backed away from him. She could feel tears come to her eyes as he came closer and closer to her._

_"Now, my precious," he said softly, stroking his thumb along her cheek. "I can have you."_

_"Please! No…" She struggled and protested against his grasp, but he only slapped her some more. Once she was down, he took her in three minutes. Feeling weak and miserable, she couldn't even move. So, he said, "Crawl to me, pet."_

_She got down on all fours and began to crawl like a baby. He snapped his fingers at her to hurry up._

_"Whisper seductively."_

_"I-I don't know how to," she said through her sobs._

_The rape was very bad, but no different than anything else._

She covered her mouth as her chin quivered and a few tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped her eyes with her hands and looked at the audience again. Her sisters were crying, too.

"When did he first hit you, and why?"

"There shouldn't be a reason," she said under her breath.

_She heard crying in a closet in his bedroom and she wanted to see what it was. She opened the closet and gasped with shock, horror, and disgust. Among dead skeletons with pieces of hair still on their skulls and flesh hanging off their bones, and a freshly dead woman with barely any hair and spiders and rats crawling all over the skeletons and the dead woman, was a little girl with tears slowly streaming down her face. She had pale skin, though not as pale as the woman's, and brown eyes and dark brown curly hair. Prue quickly closed the door but then she heard a little "Mommy," escape from the closet. She opened the door again and picked up the little child. She sat her on the bed and asked, "What is your name, sweetie?"_

_"Holly. I'm four years old and I don't have a mommy."_

_"Who put you in here?"_

_"My daddy. My mommy won't move. She was sitting next to me."_

_Prue looked at the decayed body and almost threw up in her mouth._

_"She said we would run, but Daddy got her. He thought I would be useful later."_

_"Oh god," she spoke through her tears. She held her close to her side. "Okay, baby, you stay with me."_

_"Who are you?"_

_"Whitaker's new wife. My name is Prue, and I'm twenty-four."_

_"I don't want you to go!" she wailed, hugging Prue's midsection. For such a little girl, she had a strong grip._

_ "We must run, my angel," she said urgently as Holly clung tighter to her legs._

_"No!" she shrieked as Whitaker came towards them. "Don't hurt me, Daddy! Don't hurt me!"_

_"I-I found her," Prue said with hesitation._

_"Yeah, whatever," he said, scoffing. He pulled Holly off Prue's legs and threw her to the side while Prue's throat closed up. Then, he had her by the waist and was now pushing her against the wall._

_"Don't hurt Prue!" Holly screamed._

_"Shut up, child!" Whitaker said calmly. Then, he stared into Prue's eyes and kissed her deeply. She bit his tongue as soon as she felt it. He stumbled back when she slammed her knee into his crotch._

_"You stupid whore!" he complained, holding his crotch._

_"Did you kill that girl's mommy?"_

_"I killed my previous wives, Julie and Skye...because they stopped loving me. I'll never get rid of you." His eyes went crazy and he punched her to the ground. "You can't ever leave me!"_

Prue gasped. "He murdered other women...they used to be his wives...and then there was a little girl...I asked him about it...and he hit me. I was so terrified...I just...I didn't know what to do."

"You do know that the cops will need to search my client's house to find this evidence, don't you?"

"Yes sir. You...you know I'm not lying...right?" She sniffled.

Cole ignored her and continued the interrogation. "Did you ever try to escape?"

"Yes...three times. He...he locked me in the basement...the third time...and other times...he'd throw me in a closet...and every night...he and his friends...Roger...Shax...Zile...Dragon...Gabriel.. .they would all rape me. Sometimes I thought they would actually kill me and my pain would stop."

_Prue opened a closet door that had always been forbidden and what she saw had shaken her to the core. She then realized why it was untouched for the whole five years she'd lived there. A very small boy, about five years of age, was sitting in a corner of the bug-infested closet and he was shivering. His clothes were dirty and his red hair was matted. He looked so skinny, he had been beaten, and he was very close to death from starvation. Prue was malnourished, but she was certainly better off than this little boy. There was a heavy thud behind her and she quickly picked up the boy and held him close to her chest, under her shirt, so her husband wouldn't see him. She hoped he'd be okay, but he took his last breath in her arms and she cried, because she'd never heard him speak. The basement smelled of death, and Berman sharply pushed her to the ground immediately._

_"I see you found your stepson," Berman muttered dryly._

"He was keeping a child in a closet...not the same one I found before, but a different one...this one died, the other one...I don't know what happened to her!" she sobbed.

"How do I know you didn't kill these people? You're blubbering and tripping over your words, and that's what nervous people do when they know they're doing something wrong. If you are lying, you will be in serious trouble, do you understand me?"

_Minutes turned to hours. Hours turned to days. Prue had been inside the closet for so long, that she didn't even know if the month had ended yet. It was dark and musty. She couldn't stop sneezing and she was beyond pissed off, since she couldn't find a knife or anything else that was sharp to stab herself with. Nobody was even looking for her, and she knew her closeness with some of the people in this town was too good to be true. At first she was scared, but now, she was extremely bored. She'd gotten tired of crying a while ago. She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her cheek on her knees. That was when she realized her legs were still broken, so she quickly released them and let them fall back straight on the floor. Her tears and saliva had weakened the duct tape, so a piece of it was hanging off her mouth. She knew it was useless to yell for help, though. It was clear nobody was coming. They were all too busy with their own lives. They didn't need Prue. With this realization, she felt hopeless. It was time to go, but she was still searching for an object to saw herself out of the closet with. She imagined herself jumping off a huge building with screaming behind her as she fell to her death. Getting killed by traffic was just too easy and quick, though. The slow and painful suicide was way better._

She let out a small scream while clutching at her chest. Her heart was beating a mile a minute and the flashbacks were beginning to be too much for her. "No...please...just...believe me...I would never..."

"Why did all those men want you so badly?"

"They're sick, every one of them!"

_You stupid bitch, can't you do anything right?_

_Cum to me now, you dumb whore!_

_Get out of here! Get out of my life!_

___Work! Work! Work!_

_You're pathetic. You never do a good job._

_You belong to me._

_I can have you. I'm the only one who can have you._

_I love you._

_I hate you._

_You're stupid. _

_You're worthless._

_Fuck you._

_Get over here, you stupid dirty maid! _

_You got soup on my tie. You damn slut! _

_Ragamuffin._

"No, but they had to have had a reason."

"No reason," she gasped out. "None at all."

"You probably flirted with them and then proved that you only loved your husband and didn't want to commit adultery, so they were mad at you for leading them on like that! Now, I'm a man, and I know what they're all going through right now. I've been fucked over by a lot of women, and I bet you broke all of their hearts." Cole shook his head. "I'm done with you for the moment...you got a witness?"

"Yeah, she's got a witness, you're looking at him," Andy said in a tight voice. She almost lost her balance when getting off the chair, but he steadied her. She walked over to where her sisters were sitting and collapsed in the spot next to Piper. She laid her head in her younger sister's lap while Andy gave his statement.

"How did you know Ms. Halliwell?"

"I've known her since we were five. We dated for a short time in high school and then parted ways when I moved to Portland."

"When did you rescue her?"

"Two weeks ago from today. I had just returned to San Francisco and Inspector Morris and I were on night patrol...and we saw your client burning missing person signs, so we went to investigate. We found out he's not only an arsonist, but he'd also been abusing his wife, Prue, for the last five years."

"How did she react to your rescuing her?"

"First, she was scared, and then when she saw that it was me, she was shocked. She was crying tears of joy that I had saved her from all of her misery."

"How did you know that my client was the one who beat her?"

"Well, she's got evidence on her face and she's got handprint marks all over her person. I saw her in that basement, fully bare and chained up. She never associated with anyone, only him. Who else would want to hurt her, besides his friends? I take her word for it, because nobody bursts into tears when they're flat-out lying. Prue...I mean, Ms. Halliwell, she always tells the truth. She would never want to get anyone in trouble. She didn't even want to talk today, but she wants those men out of her life for good. In fact, they should be given the death penalty for trying to kill her-that is attempted murder-and she also mentioned that he literally had skeletons in his closet. Who would have such a twisted mind to lie about that?"

Piper was stroking Prue's hair as they both cried.

"How do you know that Ms. Halliwell wasn't just begging for attention and another lover to cheat on my client with?"

"I know her, that's why!" Andy exploded. "She doesn't do things like that. Yes, she made a mistake in marrying him, but she would never willingly have sex with any man she sees! She was raped and in a lot of danger! If you don't believe me, why don't you talk to _my _lawyer?"

Prue bit her lip. "See, everything I do...it makes him so mad."

"No, honey, he's fighting for you, and that is really brave of him to stand up against Cole. He's an asshole and he pisses everybody off," Phoebe told her.

"Yeah...Andy's just being your loyal protector. He looks like he's ready to bite Cole's head off," Piper added.

Darryl quickly led Andy away from the witness stand and Prue sat up. "No, don't...but he was sticking up for me...oh, his emotions were controlling him...I hate this! Why does he have to be an inspector?"

"At least he's coming back to you," Leo said, and Andy took his place next to Prue.

Prue nodded. "Thanks for the input. Andy...you were wonderful out there." She sat up and pulled her knees to her chest.

"I got too crazy. I just can't stand seeing you like this...he tore into you and ripped out your heart."

"No, that was me," Phoebe said angrily. "That's the past, though, and what he did to Prue...verbally abusing her like that...I wish it was legal to kill him."

Larry Henderson was now interrogating _him_. Prue closed her eyes but just tried to listen to what was being said.

"Mr. Berman, how did you meet Ms. Halliwell?"

"She was crying when Roger dumped her, and I comforted her. I said she could get married to another man and that made her want to date me such a short time after Roger. I made her feel better."

"Why did you love her and then decide to hit her?"

"I didn't touch her, she's lying! She is my jewel and I would never hurt any of my jewels." He was sweating as he said this. "She got into a car accident on her way home from work and of course, blamed it all on me and my business associates."

Prue scoffed. "How are you gonna explain those fucking handprints, then?"

"Why did you force her to change her name, ability status, and keep her away from her family?"

"She agreed to elope, but she didn't want her sisters to find out. If she was still herself, her sisters would not let us be together, and I couldn't allow that to happen. They didn't know me as her boyfriend, and I didn't want them to know me as her husband. I didn't force her into anything...she just agreed because she loved me."

"Bullshit," Prue said harshly.

"Why did you let your friends rape her?"

"They didn't rape her. She was a big fan of orgies. She liked us to be rough with her."

"You just lied about her being in a car accident, didn't you? She got those injuries from you and your friends."

"Like I said, she asked for it. She was so infuriating!"

"Your story doesn't add up. First, you said she wanted the sex, but now you're saying that she was infuriating and asked for it, like she didn't want the sex, but she made you so mad that you and your friends had to hit and rape her as a punishment."

"How would you feel if you had a wife who dropped and burned things all the time while making meals for you? How would you like your wife snooping through your stuff? I told her specifically not to go in certain rooms, and I had a damn good reason for saying so! She needs to rot in hell for doing this to me and my friends!"

"Mr. Berman, you have already lied to the court and are charged with perjury. You have committed multiple acts of both domestic violence and murder based on what my client said. You are at risk of being found guilty."

"Well, I'm not, everything that happened to her was her fault! She didn't _have _to go inside of that closet. She didn't _have _to be so clumsy. How dare you accuse me of murder! You don't know that I did it-which I didn't."

"You didn't want her to go inside the closet because that was where you hid your dead victims. Are you aware that my client is so broken down right now that Inspector Trudeau and her sister are holding her to keep her from falling off the seat?"

"That's pretty pathetic. _She _eloped with me, _she _agreed to keep herself a secret from her family, and _she _was our free prostitute."

"Why did she run away three times?"

"I have no idea. She was so ungrateful...I gave her everything!" _His _face went red and _he_ gritted his teeth. _He _charged towards Prue and raised _his _foot to kick her, but Piper shielded Prue and Andy knocked _him_ to the ground in one blow. Everyone gasped and Prue whimpered.

"Don't touch her again."

"Or what?" _he _asked while rubbing _his_ bruised eye.

"I'll make you wish you were dead," Andy threatened him. "I'll treat you like you treated her."

"Mr. Berman, come back here, you have proven that you beat your wife without an excuse. She was just sitting there and you tried to hurt her."

"Aren't you gonna arrest Trudeau?"

"I'm going to arrest _you_ for making a scene," Darryl snapped. "Get back here and follow Mr. Henderson's orders!"

"She made me do it! She shouldn't have run away from me! She's sad because she misses me!"

_His _friends gave her the sign for oral sex, and she turned her face into Piper's shirt while shaking violently.

"Mr. Berman, I'm not going to bother asking you any more questions."

_His_ friends were called to the stand and Prue tuned out everything they said until the last man to speak started making excuses for their repulsive behavior.

"We were just doing what Whit told us to do!" Gabriel protested. "We had no idea that she was really Prue Halliwell!"

At that, Darryl led _him_ back to the seat by his friends. The jury went into another room and deliberated for at least ten or fifteen minutes. When they returned, the judge asked them, "Have you reached a verdict?"

"We have, Your Honor."

"What say you?"

"We find Mr. Whitaker Berman on accounts of perjury, guilty, and domestic violence, guilty. He has violated Penal Code 594 PC. He is also under suspicion of first degree murder, so he is in jeopardy of getting the death penalty until he is tried a second time with further evidence. He and his accomplices have violated Penal Codes 261-263."

"Then they get thirty-five years to life in prison," the judge decided.

"I would like to pursue the murder charges after an investigation," Larry said.

"You have two weeks to investigate and put forth a case. This trial is adjourned," the judge announced and banged the gavel.

"What, no!" Cole and his client roared, and _his_ friends stopped rubbing themselves suddenly. They glared at Prue as Darryl led them all away.

"We won!" Phoebe shouted happily and made out with Coop. Piper and Andy hugged Prue tightly and then Piper kissed Leo. It was exciting, but Prue just had to get away from them all for a second.

"I'm going to talk specifics to Darryl and the defense team," Andy said and stood up.

"I'll be back...I'm gonna go get a bottle of water," Prue let them know.

"I have to get back to work. See you tonight, guys...bye, sweetheart," Leo said and kissed Piper's forehead and then her lips.

Phoebe and Coop were cuddling while chatting with Piper, so Prue took this opportunity to get a bottle of water. She wanted to be alone, and she hummed to herself as she snuck out of the courtroom. Just as she was about to get a refreshment, she felt someone roughly turn her around to face them. It was _his _lawyer, and Prue swallowed the bile that was rising in her throat.

Cole trapped her between him and the wall. "I know you still love my client."

Prue gave him a death stare. "I hate his guts, now leave me alone." She tried to move away from him, but he stepped closer to her so there was no space at all between them. She bit her lip to stop herself from openly crying. Her hands began to sweat and shake and nausea took over her.

"You sure about that? You eloped with him and stayed with him for five years. Don't let anyone like that stupid Inspector Trudeau put words in your mouth...you want him. You want Berman, and I'll get him free from his cell just for you-but on one condition, thank me with a blowjob. You wanna know why all his friends liked you so much...and they still do. It's because you're a sexy little minx, that's why-hey, look at me when I talk to you!" He grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the wall and kept his other hand on one side of her head. She jumped and her eyes landed on his face. She was afraid he would throw her across the room by her hair if she didn't obey.

Prue clenched her teeth. "Let me go." The longer he kept talking and spitting in her face, the more dizzy she felt. Her knees buckled, but she didn't fall because one of his knees were between hers. She scratched at the wall behind her, willing herself not to lose her balance while he continued his tirade.

"Just drop the act already! You go prancing around in your fancy skirt and blouse to court, I mean, even I had a boner. I cannot do that on the job! You make men want you, so you can't say they raped you. You provoked them to, and you got them violent when you told them no. You're a seductress, Prue Halliwell, just like that dumbass sister of yours. You probably got yourself pregnant from all that whoring around-"

He was suddenly shoved away from her and Andy was pushing him into the wall opposite where Prue stood. Her jaw dropped in wonder and her heart jumped.

She was gasping loudly and barely getting a hold on herself. This was one of her first panic attacks, and it was so strong that it sent her to the ground in tears. "Andy, thank god," she sobbed. Then she said in barely a whisper, "Just hold me."

"Hey, Turner, if I ever catch you near her again, I'll speak to your boss and I'll make sure you're fired, got that?" Andy growled and shook Cole by his jacket collar.

"Yeah, whatever, have fun with the little sex toy you got for tonight," Cole muttered as he briskly walked away and brushed himself off.

"Damn it, Prue, I'm so sorry," Andy apologized and helped her up. She was barely able to stand, let alone walk, so she slipped back down into her sitting position against the wall. He took a spot next to her and let her lean on him. He helped her through her breathing and got it back to normal. The tremors that were spreading through her body started to subside as his very presence soothed her. His calming words were simply, "Just take a deep inhale...in, and out, in, and out."

"I didn't know what he would do to me..." Prue said softly through tears.

"I've got you now. Ready to leave?"

"Are...are we gonna see him again?"

"Even if we do, I'll warn Piper and Phoebe, and we'll be on your flanks. It'll be like your protective circle. Nobody can hurt you when you're with us."

"Better not tell Phoebe...she looked angry enough when...the district attorney...showed up in the courtroom. He must have really broken her heart by not showing at her twenty-first birthday party. Couple that with her sister telling such a chilling tale, you can bet she's shaken up. Piper's the strongest out of all of us right now. I suggest you just tell her."

"Guys? What's the matter?" Phoebe asked as she, Coop, and Piper made their way towards Prue and Andy.

"Oh, just a panic attack...you know, the trial...overwhelming."

Piper smiled at her sympathetically. "We're all here for you, honey. Come on, let's leave this horrible place." She and Andy helped Prue up, and Phoebe and Coop followed behind them as they hurried out of the courtroom.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: TVADDiCT11, pbyrond, Emily, invisibleinkstains, and SwiftyGirl7474!**


	6. Bonding

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474 and invisibleinkstains for beta'ing and TVADDiCT11 for prereading!**

Due to her big sister's and Andy's facial expressions, Piper knew something had gone wrong just a few minutes ago. Prue was clinging onto Andy for dear life and looking around like someone was going to get her.

"I think I need to be with her," Andy told Piper. "Do you mind if I get a ride with you guys?"

"No, it's okay. You can stay as long as you'd like," Piper invited him.

Phoebe drove them all home in Piper's car while Prue sat between Andy and Piper in the back seat. Piper couldn't help but notice how Andy pulled Prue into his arms and she laid her head against his chest. Sometimes he would give her shoulders a massage. It reminded Piper of the old days and she smiled while turning to look out the window.

When Phoebe parked the car in their driveway, everyone got out, but they were stopped by dozens of reporters that were invading the area around the manor.

"What the hell..." Coop started in disbelief.

"Oh, god, no," Prue moaned as microphones kept being shoved in her face. Andy shielded her from photographers and reporters, but they continued to ask her questions.

"Miss Halliwell, one thing! Please, we just..."

"Miss Halliwell, how did you feel in that courtroom?"

"Miss Halliwell! You must have been so relieved to have been rescued..."

"Inspector, how did you find her?"

They rushed inside the manor and slammed the door on the nosy reporters. "Shame on those people! What do you guys want to have for dinner?" Piper asked them.

"We should just order a pizza," Phoebe said. "You can make Fettuccine Alfredo."

"I'll call the pizza place," Coop offered.

"Okay, then, Prue, Andy, what do you think?" Piper asked.

"Oh, um, wait, what was that?" Prue wanted to know.

"Dinner? Pizza and fettuccine?"

"Yeah, yeah, sounds great," Andy answered. Prue giggled.

"What kind of pizza does everyone want?" Coop asked.

Phoebe chose vegetarian with tomatoes and broccoli on top, and the rest of them wanted a cheese pizza with pepperoni and sausage, so Coop ordered half and half of each. Piper started on the fettuccine and Prue came by her side to help her. She stirred the noodles while her big sister made the white sauce in another pan. Andy called someone on the phone, presumably Darryl, and went out the door to shoo everyone away.

"Thanks for letting him come here," Prue said quietly.

"No problem."

"I don't know why I'm such a magnet for trouble. You know the lawyer who made me so upset at the trial?"

"Cole Turner?"

"Yeah, that's the one. He actually had the nerve to try sexually harrassing me when I was getting a bottle of water. He was basically saying that I was a slut who enticed his client and _his_ friends and that this whole thing was my fault. I don't like Cole, and I was dreading to talk to him as soon as I heard his name and realized that he was Phoebe's ex from hell, but I never thought he would want to touch me."

Piper gasped sharply. "_What? _Did he hurt you?"

"Not that bad, he scared me half to death, though. Andy came just in time and warned him to stay away from me. Cole was standing so close to me that I can still feel his rancid breath on my face and his hand around my wrist in a vise grip. I was completely trapped."

"That guy really pisses me off," Piper fumed. "I'm glad Andy got there when he did and I'm surprised he didn't kill Cole. So, _that_ was what your panic attack was all about?"

Prue nodded. "Panic attacks are so terrifying. It feels like the world is spinning around you and you can't move. You have no control over yourself...I-I thought I was going to pass out or die. I literally couldn't breathe for a good thirty seconds or so."

"Oh, wow. The next time I see Cole...I don't know what I'll do to him. Anyway, good thing you're home safe with us."

"Yeah."

By the time the pasta was made, the pizza arrived and Phoebe set it down on the table. Everyone took a slice and saved the rest for Leo and the girls. They ate while watching television until Prue's trial came on the news.

"This is Eric Lohman reporting live on the case of Halliwell versus Berman..."

"Turn that off!" Prue commanded. "I sounded like a blubbering idiot in there!" She turned it off herself.

"No, you didn't," Andy contradicted her. "Everything you said was correct. You were held captive and now you've been found."

"Most of America's probably crying about now," Phoebe said.

"Not many people watch the news," Prue dismissed her baby sister's statement.

"Let's not talk about _that_ right now, okay, guys?" Piper interrupted them. She made cinnamon rolls, her specialty. It was also the first dessert that she and Leo ate together. Piper remembered that he told her she really knew the way to a man's heart.

She served coffee with the rolls before eating her own. As she handed Phoebe her cup of coffee, Prue said, "Piper, sit down, you're not our maid."

"I know, but you know me, I _do_ love the kitchen."

"Yeah, she practically lives there!" Phoebe joked and took a sip of her coffee.

Piper sat between her sisters but then quickly stood up again. "Wait, when were we supposed to get the kids?"

"Aviva said she was bringing them back here at ten, since she didn't know when the trial would be over," Phoebe reminded her.

"Oh yeah..."

"This is so good!" Prue exclaimed in reference to her cinnamon roll.

"Yeah, my mouth is in heaven," Phoebe added.

"Thank you," Piper said pleasantly.

The guys were wolfing their treats down; they were much better at showing how much they liked the food rather than complimenting the chef. A while later, Andy had to go, and Prue showed him the door.

"I appreciated dinner, dessert, and the cup of coffee," he told Piper.

"You're welcome."

"Prue, I hope you'll be okay now."

"I'm fine. Bye, Andy!"

They shared a hug and Piper saw him lift Prue up slightly. When he set her back down, she sighed. He walked out the door and closed it behind him. She locked it and made her way upstairs very slowly, occasionally leaning against the staircase every few steps. Phoebe was too wrapped up in Coop to tease their sister, but Piper caught up to Prue and pulled her into her bedroom.

Prue laughed giddily. "Piper, what are you doing?"

"Alright, you, on the bed, now," Piper commanded playfully. "You've been dazed ever since Andy left the house, spill!"

"What?" Prue asked innocently. They both jumped on Piper's bed.

"You two have a really deep connection. In high school, Phoebe and I would swoon at what you and Andy would say to each other. We desired for a boyfriend like Andy, and when I was dating Jeremy, I would wish for a man like Mark to swoop in and save me...but now, Leo is my hero. If only he was around when the master of creepyville was in the picture!"

"I thought it was 'mayor' of creepyville?"

"Well, yes, but he called himself the master and me the pet. Back to you and Andy." Piper looked at Prue expectantly.

"All I know is one minute, that bastard was towering over me and the next...Andy was there...protecting me!"

"Mmm, that is so sweet. He's always there for you."

"I felt...warm...in my heart when Andy saved me from Phoebe's stupid ex boyfriend. I just can't believe he rescued me...the fair maiden. I don't want to need a Prince Charming riding in on a white horse, it makes me feel weak. Besides, he was just doing his job...he would have done it for anyone else."

"I don't think he would go home with the person and he held you in his arms in the back of my car and stayed at our house for dinner, coffee and desserts."

"Well, he's known us since childhood. To you, it was a romantic or even friendly gesture, but to me...he couldn't possibly think of me as more than a victim. Anyway, off this subject...what did Phoebe see in Cole anyway?"

"I haven't the slightest clue," Piper said and rolled her eyes. "She's always liked the bad boys, and he was...bad. After he was out of her life, she moped around and called him a demon, for lack of a better term. I wanted to just...explode him!"

Prue laughed. "Bam! There ya go!" They hugged.

...

It was almost the end of Leo's shift. His newest patient in the intensive care unit, Kyle, had been thrown down a flight of stairs, beaten up by thugs, and managed to escape just before he could get killed.

"Well, son, you're very lucky you're alive," Leo said.

"What I don't get is why I'm stuck here," he said grumpily. "I feel...fine."

"He saved my life, Dr. Wyatt," his girlfriend Jenny sobbed. "They just came out of nowhere, and he pushed me out of the way...and he fell down a whole ten feet...he can't walk anymore, can he? He's lost the use of his legs."

Leo hated being the bearer of bad news, but at least he didn't have to give a time of death report. "He'll be wheelchair bound for at least six weeks. His right leg is more crushed than his left, and he has broken all of his leg bones. He'll need to keep both of his legs elevated in order for them to heal, and no activities at all until he's better."

"Six weeks? You promise?" Jenny sniffled.

"Or more. I'm sorry, but I can't promise anything. It's too early to tell."

"At least you didn't get your ribs crushed, Kyle. That's worse," Jenny said and held his hand. She leaned down and kissed his forehead.

Leo thought he heard Kyle tell her quietly that he would have done anything for her, and he smiled. "You're a brave young man."

"No, I'm a stupid teenage boy. It was my idea for us to spend a night alone, away from adults, away from society, and she wanted to hang out at the movies where there were lots of people around. She gave in, and look...I just thank God that I'm the one who ended up paying for my own mistake. I guess her uncle hates me for a good reason. Not only am I just a dork-"

Jenny cut him off. "Hey! Kyle, stop that! I love you, and that is all that matters. I called the cops and that's really all I did...I wish I could have done more to help."

"You did the best you could, Jenny," Leo said. "Now, Kyle should stay here overnight, and there will be doctors and nurses coming around to check up on him every few hours."

"Can I stay here? Please?"

"Jenny, go, we have school tomorrow, and you gotta go back to your family..."

"Oh, whatever, Uncle Dan's too into his new girl, Missy or whatever her name is, that he's got no time for me, and my parents are in Saudi Arabia...I'm staying with you whether you want me to or not." She crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly, reminding Leo of Piper and how when she set her mind on something, she'd stick to it.

"Are you going to be comfortable here?" Leo asked and started to pack his medical supplies into his bag.

"Yeah...I've got layers, if that's what you mean. We were planning to stay out all night anyway."

"Okay, good night."

As Kyle closed his eyes, he waved two fingers at Leo. Jenny stood up. "Dr. Wyatt?"

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just...you're the best doctor I've ever met in my life. I've never really known any doctors as...kind...as you are. Maybe because most of my doctors are old and rigid...and you're so young. I'm sorry...I have no idea why I said that..."

"It's okay, thank you. Get some sleep, it's late."

"Bye!"

While he hoped the teenage girl wasn't crushing on him, what she said reminded him of something Piper had said a few years ago, when they first met.

_"Are you always this gentle with your patients? You have such a...healing touch." Piper giggled._

_"Well, I try my best," Leo responded as he wrapped her forearm with gauze. "Is that better?"_

_"It should stop the bleeding. I still cannot believe I ended up scratching myself trying to lift up that stupid board...what was I thinking?"_

_"You thought you had superhuman strength. It happens. Some things are just heavier than they look."_

_"I wish I was invincible."_

_"Everyone feels that way."_

_"Why are men stronger than women? It's just not fair."_

_"That's hard to explain. Women are smarter than men, though. They're also better at showing emotion. Be proud to be a woman, Piper."_

_What he told her brought a smile to her face, and what a lovely smile it was._

He took a cab back home and entered the house quickly and silently. He tiptoed up the stairs and opened the door to Melinda's room. He wasn't planning on her waking up to his arrival, though.

"Daddy!" she shouted, but he put his finger to his lips.

"Shh...you're supposed to be asleep when Daddy gets home, silly."

"Sorry, Daddy!" she whispered.

"Hey, Mel!" He gave her a few kisses and she patted his face. "Go to sleep, your mommy will kill me if she finds out I woke you up! I love you very, very much."

"I love you, Daddy. Me no tell Mommy. Shush."

"Yes, shush. Night!"

"Bye-bye!"

Leo slipped into his and Piper's bedroom. In their bathroom, he took off his scrubs and put on his pajama pants. He joined her in bed and hugged her close to his bare chest. She sighed softly and kissed him lightly on his shoulder, which was where she could reach. He lifted her chin and their lips touched a few times.

"Welcome home, honey. How was work?"

"Hard, but good. The last one...those poor kids. Guy saves his girlfriend from a bunch of hoodlums and ends up hurting himself...he needs a wheelchair when he's released...she's sleeping with him in the hospital."

"Aw, that's romantic...sounds like something you'd do for me."

"I'll always protect you, baby."

"Leo!" Piper giggled. "You don't have to make me swoon _that_ much!"

"I love you," he kept repeating with each kiss he pressed on every inch of her skin.

"I love you too," she responded happily.

They moaned each other's names as their kisses became more and more heated. The first sexual fantasy he ever had of her had happened long after his first wife had passed on. He had been able to tell Piper was attracted to him, since she kept making excuses to be with him while he was working.

_"You're a great worker," she complimented Leo from the top of the stairs._

_He wiped his sweaty forehead with his arm. "Thanks. __You're stretching my ego."_

_"Is that a bad thing?"_

_"Not at all. I love it. You're doing a super job at being my waitress. You get everything just right."_

_"Wow. Thank you," she said quietly._

_"You're welcome."_

_The Halliwell sisters put him to work all day, and Piper gave him water to drink every thirty minutes. She was sexy in short-shorts and a tank top that was exposing her belly and cleavage. She had let her hair loose in flowing curls down her back._

_"How are you doing there, soldier?"_

_"I might need some water, miss." He winked at her and took off his shirt. She blushed and looked away as he did so._

_"Of course, sir." She rose and ran down the stairs. He snickered at her flustered behavior; she was totally falling for him-literally. She tripped over the last stair but balanced herself. She__ came back a few seconds later with some water. He downed it instantly and handed her back the plastic cup._

_"You need to stop working because I might just distract you," she said in a seductive voice. He just stared. "Leo, you know you want this, don't you?" She unfastened her shorts and unzipped so she was down to her red lacy panties. "One step closer to heaven."_

_"Oh, god, yes, baby."_

_"All for you," she murmured licking her lips. "You can thank me later."_

_There she was, spreading her legs and showing all her wetness right in front of him. She put one finger in the hole and started panting heavily. He squeezed his straining cock and groaned. "Fuck..."_

_"Leo! You there?" Piper snapped her fingers in front of his face._

_He blinked a few times. "Yeah, sorry, I spaced out."_

_"Hm, I'm sure you did. Here's what you wanted."_

_He took the water from her and drank it, enjoying the coolness as it slid down his throat. "Aaah, that hit the spot."_

"Leo, I know that smirk," Piper said slyly. "It's a horny thought you're having about me, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah...you were wearing red lingerie under that outfit..."

"What outfit?" He felt her squeeze _the spot_ and he moaned.

"That black tank top and those jean shorts. You know when we first flirted with each other?"

"Hm...I'm surprised you still remember that day."

"How could I forget? You were irresistible."

"_Were_?" she teased him._  
_

"You still are, light of my life."

Piper smiled as Leo wrapped her in his arms and kissed her a few times until they drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Leo and Piper were the first ones up, or so they thought. As they walked downstairs together, they saw Prue making breakfast. She turned around when they entered the kitchen.

"Oh, morning, lovebirds."

"Good morning, sunshine, how are you doing?" Piper asked.

"I'm all right...just as long as those reporters don't ever come around here again. Hope you guys like egg pancakes."

"They sound yummy," the engaged couple said at the same time, and Prue laughed.

"You guys are really adorable with that 'say everything together' stuff."

"Thanks. Phoebe and Coop find it awfully annoying," Piper murmured.

"That's probably because they've been around you two longer than I have. Also, it, um, never mind. So, breakfast is ready!"

They sprinkled cinnamon on their egg pancakes and began to eat. Piper packed Leo his lunch after breakfast. They woke up Melinda and Parker so Prue could bring them with her to nursery school. He got dressed and left the house after kissing Piper goodbye and telling her that he loved her.

He noticed that Prue was getting his daughter and his niece into her car and having heard of the story about her getting into an accident which almost killed Phoebe almost ten years ago, he was curious as to why she wasn't traumatized by anything to do with cars. He met Paige through Phoebe and Piper and found out that she, too was in a terrible crash, and it resulted in the death of her parents. She froze up whenever she saw cars being set on fire, even on television, and she blamed herself. _So how was Prue so brave_?

"Leo, what's the matter?" Prue asked and stuck her head out of the window after the girls were safely in their carseats.

"I'm just wondering...why doesn't it bother you?"

"Why doesn't what bother me?"

"Being in a car...driving it. Aren't you afraid of what might happen? Sorry to be so abrupt, but Piper told me about what happened with you and Phoebe and the car."

"Oh...um, that was ten years ago. Believe you me, I didn't want to drive for a few months after Phoebe was hospitalized, but then I realized that it wasn't my fault. A drunk driver hit us, the bastard."

"About five years ago, my wife-my first wife-died in a car accident. I was taking us to somewhere, or from somewhere, I don't remember...but I couldn't drive anyone anyplace ever since. I don't feel comfortable with it...unless I'm just by myself."

"God, I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you. You must be okay with driving other people, even children, huh?"

"Yeah, I know now that I'm not a danger to the road. I believe in myself."

"It's easier for you, you didn't lose Phoebe."

"At least you're not afraid to tell people you love them."

Leo looked at Prue quizzically as she started up the car. He wanted to ask her why she said that, but he decided not to. Instead, all he said was, "You made a great statement last night. It pulled at all of our hearts."

"I got too emotional. Thanks anyway, though."

"You had every right to get that way."

"It was hard." Prue sighed. "I don't want to be late for work, and you shouldn't be either. Bye!"

"Bye," he said as she stepped on the gas and departed from the driveway.

...

"Okay, Piper, I cannot believe it's been three weeks and I've had the same recurring nightmare of Cole drowning me to death and then feeding me to _him _or one of _his _minions who have somehow morphed into sharks in the sea. I mean, I should stop now, right? Those assholes are all in jail for sexual abuse, domestic violence, arson, and murder, and I don't think that corrupt lawyer will bother me anytime soon." Prue threw up her hands in frustration and covered her face with her hands. "Sometimes it's not Cole who's doing the drowning, though, sometimes it's...this gray-haired man I've never seen in my life."

Piper put her arm around her older sister as they walked through Golden Gate Park. "Having nightmares after such a traumatic event is normal."

"_They've_ never tried to eat me, though. I may be afraid of drowning, but I've never been drowned before! I don't even swim. Oh, wait, _he _did attempt drowning me in the bathtub, but I think he was just doing it for laughs. Good trick on _his_ part," Prue said sarcastically. "The weirdest thing about it was that I killed them by squinting my eyes and they disappeared in flames."

"Well, that's new. Maybe you were dreaming of your wish to get back at your enemies and you drowning represents you being in constant turmoil. You apparently survived because you have good people around you in your waking life. The fact that you used magic powers symbolizes that you are looking for a way to move forward."

"Are you analyzing my dreams now? Thank you, that makes a lot of sense!"

"I guess I am. My more important point is, that these nightmares go away with time. Don't think about your horrible past as much as you have been. Focus on all the enjoyable things happening in your life right now, for instance, Leo's big birthday party coming up tonight at the club. He's turning thirty, and we are going to have a blast! I've hired a few bands to play, so we won't stop dancing until our feet are sore!" Piper said excitedly.

"Oh yeah...who's all coming besides Andy, us, Leo, Phoebe, and Coop?"

"Every single one of our other friends and his parents. It's a casual dance party, which is why we don't have to spend all day pampering...although I probably should. It'll be the second time I've met his parents, and I doubt they remember me." The sisters headed back to Piper's car, which was waiting in the lot.

"I'm sure they love you." Prue got into the passenger seat while Piper began to take them home.

"They don't know that we have a daughter and we're not married yet. I just won't talk about Melinda, then, that's all. Thank god Aviva is free tonight to come to our house and take care of the girls."

"Don't tell me they're picky about people having sex before marriage!"

"His pacifist nature had to come from somewhere. Frankly, I'm surprised he agreed to have sex with me before he proposed. His parents will think I've corrupted him or something."

"You and Leo may have gone against their beliefs, but if they love their son and want to see him happy, they won't forbid you two from seeing each other...besides, you're adults! You can do whatever the hell you want."

"It's not that, it's...I want to be accepted by his parents. I know that Mom would accept him if she was alive...and Dad, well, he hated him at first, but then he learned to deal with the fact that I had a boyfriend."

"Victor's not even around, who cares what he thinks?" Prue rolled her eyes. "He didn't even know about my trial, did he? I bet he doesn't even know I'm back or who made it possible for me to return. Also, Leo's parents will like you because you are a sweetie pie and very loving to their pride and joy."

"That raises my hopes. Now, about Dad, Phoebe called him sometime and let him know that you were here again, but he just so happened to be on a business trip. He better congratulate you when he arrives to mine and Leo's wedding."

"Eh, whatever. Let's just get ready to party!"

Andy rang the doorbell at five in the evening since he was going to the party with them. Paige was already at the manor since Phoebe picked her up from her apartment on her way home from school. Piper was about to get Leo from the hospital, but just before her sisters could change, Melinda suddenly waddled up to the group with a dripping, dirty diaper. "I gotta go potty real bad."

Piper rushed her little girl to the toilet, but it was too late. Paige and Phoebe were still cleaning up the mess while Piper led Prue to where the diapers and clean clothes were, since a foul smell emanated from Melinda's pants. She started to cry, and Prue picked her up instantly.

"Oh!" they groaned while holding their noses.

"Such a stinky baby," Prue complained. "Why, Melinda? Andy's here, give me a break."

"You shouldn't be walking around with that scrape on your foot," Piper murmured and took her daughter from her sister. Prue had tripped over a tree branch while playing with the kids at daycare a few days ago, and Piper still felt protective of her.

"I need to get some experience changing a diaper before I step foot into that daycare center again."

"You're injured, Prue!" Piper set Melinda on her changing table and lifted her little legs up to take her pants and diaper off.

"It's only a dull ache now," Prue insisted. She undid one of the diapers while Piper used baby wipes to clean the mess. They both ended up putting Melinda's diaper on her. "Okay, Melly-belly, what do you wanna wear, hm?" Melinda was still crying, so Prue bent her head down and began to blow air through her closed lips on Melinda's belly so it made a farting sound. The toddler then erupted into giggles. She poked Prue's nose, and Piper stifled a laugh.

"I'd like to just freeze this moment in time. You got my baby all excited after a disgusting poopy diaper removal, do you know how much I love you right now?"

"What? Blowing raspberries on a baby's tummy is perfectly normal! Have any of you guys done it before?"

"Of course we have, but it's the first time you've physically interacted with her. It warmed my heart."

"I want my purple dress!" Melinda squealed.

"You'll get your purple dress, baby," Piper said and picked it out of the drawer. "It's her favorite one. Also, she only eats things that are white. I hope that's just a phase that lasts until elementary school."

"It did for you, it might for her. She totally takes after her mommy." Prue put the little dress on Melinda. She and Piper smiled at each other and went downstairs with Melinda to where there was conversation between the two men about all kinds of topics ranging from sports games to action movies.

"Poor Phoebe and Paige look bored out of their skulls," Piper commented. "I bet Phoebe wants to jump in about her fantastic martial arts skills that she picked up over the time you were gone. She took self-defense classes so she could protect herself, but I didn't. Being slammed down on a mat isn't something I envision going through thousands of times a week."

"If only I had Carrie's powers...I could have just thrown my attacker right out the window and saved myself without moving anything but my eyes and hands," Prue mumbled wistfully.

"She turned evil."

"Who cares? It was self defense."

"No, it was personal gain, revenge, and punishing the guilty. If we had magic powers, we'd want to protect the innocent."

"Suppose you're right. Oh well, we're only human anyway."

The doorbell chimed again and it was Aviva this time. Piper told her that Melinda had just been changed and Parker was napping. They'd have to be given dinner around seven and sleeping for the night by eight. Piper handed Melinda to the babysitter while the family and Andy collected their jackets and put their shoes on. The sisters and Paige had their purses slung over their shoulders and they hugged and kissed Melinda goodbye.

"How come she doesn't cry when we all leave?" Paige asked.

"She's used to us going out all the time and besides, she adores Aviva. She knows we'll be back. She hasn't freaked out since she turned two," Phoebe answered. "Luckily, Parker is asleep and doesn't fuss too much. It helps if you sing to her and give her a lot of love before you go."

"Yeah, that worked for Leo and I when Melinda was an infant," Piper said. "Okay, I am going to go and get my love...and we will see you there!"

...

So far, Piper had given Leo a birthday breakfast, visited him at lunch with balloons, and now she was taking him to his party. He couldn't be more than cheerful, and he was jumping inside. Dr. Harris, his and Piper's baby doctor, had persuaded Dr. Williamson to let Leo leave early as a special present and assigned Dr. Griffith to take over his shift for tonight. He thanked the men and walked down the stairs of the hospital. She got out of her car and ran up to him with a huge smile on her face. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she stood up on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear, "Happy birthday, my dear."

"Thanks, baby," he responded and kissed her passionately. "I love you."

"As do I. We have a lot of people waiting for the birthday boy, so let's get our butts over to P-3!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

At the party were his friends from the Gulf War, Darryl, Sheila, Andy, Coop, Paige, and of course, Piper and her sisters. His parents were also there, and they greeted him with hugs. He introduced Piper to them again, and they shook her hand.

"Ah yes, I remember you," his father told her.

"You've made my son so happy," his mother added.

She grinned shyly. "Well, I try my hardest."

"We're going to get married in the summer. We'll send invitations in the mail next month, two weeks before our wedding," Leo let them know.

"That's splendid!" his father exclaimed, and his mother clapped her hands.

"Oh, congratulations to you both," his mother said and squeezed them tight. "I cannot wait to see the grandchildren when you return from your honeymoon!"

They both chuckled nervously. Piper pulled him aside. "I hope your parents don't notice that I am currently pregnant!"

"They didn't say anything negative, so I think they're still naive about us."

"Welcome to Leo Wyatt's thirtieth birthday party!" a voice boomed throughout the club. "Our first musical guests are the Black Eyed Peas!"

Everyone was cheering and dancing for a few hours. Everyone sang happy birthday to him and then came the huge chocolate cake. Piper had made it, obviously, and it was decorated with the words _Happy Birthday Leo! _He opened present after present and his favorite card was from Piper. She'd written him something special and given him the best gift ever-herself. She also got him a photo album filled with pictures of the two of them over the years. As the night wore on, he and Piper took shots of alcohol along with Prue and Andy. Everything was becoming fuzzy, and their friends were egging them on to have a race. He slammed his glass down and handed it to Piper's bartender. "More, Abbey, please."

"Not for you, sir. All of you are way too drunk to function right now."

"But it's his birthday!" Piper yelled. "Aw, shit, my drink tastes funny because of my stupid pregnancy hormones!"

"Whoo!" Prue shouted as she fell off the barstool and Andy quickly grabbed her, but he too, went down with her.

"Happy birthday, man!" Andy slurred.

"Alright, it is time for you four party animals to go home!" Phoebe decided aloud.

"I'm okay!" Prue mumbled from the floor.

"You can't even get up," Coop pointed out.

Leo felt himself stumbling to a car and Paige was walking beside him. "Where...where's Piper?"

"On the other side of me."

"Hello!" Piper said in a squeaky voice. She giggled. "We are so trashed! Let's have yummy sexy time!"

"Oh, don't make me sick!"

"Sorry," the couple sang.

...

Piper sat up and opened her eyes, but she wished she hadn't. A bright light was shining in her face, so she moaned aloud and fell back into the pillow. She covered her eyes with her sheet and then noticed she was dressed in her pajamas and no longer wearing the jeans and pink top she was wearing the night before. She looked to her right and saw Leo laying there in his scrubs, dead to the world. She nudged him.

"Huh?"

"Thanks for changing my clothes. You must have been too passed out to take anything off, hm?"

"I don't remember anything last night except that you gave me the most amazing birthday sex ever at about two in the morning."

"I must have been sleeping before you, then." She stretched and yawned. "I've never felt so sore and so good at the same time...how long until this hangover goes away?"

"I dunno...let's just stay in bed all day."

"No, you gotta go to work, mister!"

"It's Saturday, Piper."

"How do you know?"

"I'm looking at my clock, and it says the day."

"Ohhh..." She rolled over and her hands clasped over a piece of folded-up paper with writing on it. She furrowed her brows in confusion and read it.

_Say happy birthday to your lover for me._

She began to get out of bed, but he stopped her. "Wait, where are you going?"

"It's too early in the morning for this shit, and my head hurts," she groaned. "I need ice water...goddamnit." She dropped the note in the trash, thinking it was a prank from someone at the party last night, probably Leo trying to be funny.

"Get some for me too, please, sweetie. Actually, never mind, let me sleep until two in the afternoon."

"Sure." She walked out of their bedroom and used the stair rail for balance. Her whole body was shaking and she hoped she wouldn't pass out again. She saw Phoebe and Paige doing things in the kitchen.

"So how was your night, Piper?" Paige asked.

"Hot and steamy?" Phoebe prodded.

"Girls, enough," she said while laughing. "Leo rocked me _hard_."_  
_

"Yeah, she's definitely drunk," Paige muttered and led Piper to the couch. "Lay down, and we'll get you something."

"Water, perhaps? Thank you. Also, I'd like aspirin and a blueberry muffin or something."

"Of course, dear sister," Phoebe said with a smile and poured Piper a glass of water. She opened the bottle of aspirin and took a pill out. "I assume Leo's still in bed?"

"Yeah...he's being so lazy. He didn't even follow me down here."

"Sometimes, I feel that way too. When I can't find something and I have to look for it, I want to say the name of the object and have it appear in my hand. Or, like, when I don't want to pay for plane tickets...I'd like to transport myself to an exotic location," Paige stated.

Piper took a drink of her water with the aspirin. "That would be a cool trick, Missy Paige."

"Yeah...too bad we're not witches like Samantha Stephens on _Bewitched_," Phoebe sighed. "We'd get everything finished with one twitch of our noses."

"I'm still a little drunk! Don't make my imagination go too wild!"

"Speaking of wild, did Andy knock Prue up or..." Paige trailed off.

"Nope," Phoebe answered her.

"Ooh, la, la!" Piper giggled. "She went right on top of him! Didn't you guys see that? Ha!" she hollered from the couch.

"Yes, it was the highlight of the party," Paige said sourly. "Some call it cute, I call it oh, hey, I felt like a seventh wheel!"

"Oh, come on, there were plenty of single guys there. Leo's friends from the Gulf War, hello!" Phoebe responded.

"They were all married. Let's face it, I'll never find a guy. I was the only one there without a date, which I found totally lame."

"Aaah, you're making my head explode!" Piper cried, and Phoebe rushed over to her with an ice pack and a piece of buttered toast.

"Sorry," Paige apologized as Phoebe laid the ice pack on Piper's forehead and the toast on a napkin in Piper's lap.

"It's okay, guys. I still had fun last night, though!" She let herself close her eyes and dream peacefully.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: ****Carly, T****VADDiCT11, Aviva426, pbyrond, invisibleinkstains, SwiftyGirl7474, and Emily!****  
**


	7. A Cry for Help

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474, TVADDiCT11, Aviva426, and invisibleinkstains for helping me with this story!**

Prue woke up with a pounding headache and she groaned. _What exactly happened last night?_ It came in flashes._ She was with her sisters...she was with Andy...they were dancing...they were drinking...oh god, what if they..._she rolled over and sighed with relief that nobody was next to her, that her clothes from the night before were still intact, and that she didn't do anything she'd regret later. _Although it wouldn't have been _that_ bad if it was with Andy...okay, Prue, don't even go there, he doesn't like you that way, and even if he does, you don't want it,_ she thought to herself.

Her digital clock on her bedside read that it was noon and then she practically jumped out of bed. She was supposed to be helping out at Adleberry Daycare, but she was four hours late, due to her hangover. She stumbled into the kitchen where she saw Phoebe and Paige making lunch. Piper was laying on the couch in the sitting room with an ice pack on her forehead and a glass of water on a side table.

"Thanks for letting me crash here," Paige was saying to Phoebe, but it sounded too loud in Prue's ears. She pressed her hands to her temples to try to relieve some of the pain.

"Oh, it's no problem...hi, Prue! You know, it's ironic that my two most responsible sisters were the only ones who got drunk besides Andy and Leo. Coop, Paige, and I didn't drink at all," Phoebe said.

"Yeah...who took us all home? I don't really remember anything after the, um, third or fourth drink...it was just a big blur...did we...?" Prue was too embarrassed to finish her question, as she felt herself blushing.

"After we saw how close you and Andy were dancing and tripping all over each other, we didn't let the two of you ride home in the same car. Coop took Andy home in his cop car and I took you, Phoebe, Leo, and Piper back here in Piper's car. So nothing happened," Paige assured her.

"Oh, good. Thank you for that," Prue said with a grateful smile. "Meanwhile, I have a splitting headache and I'm late for volunteering...I'm going to be in such deep shit! Who took the kids to daycare? God, I'm so out of it."

Phoebe raised her hand. "Luckily, I don't have school on Saturdays, so I took them. I told Sheila that you and Piper were very tired. She was extremely understanding and she said you could just rest today. How's about some water, asprin, and ice like Piper over there?" She poured water into a cup and filled a plastic bag with ice. "Also, you need food in your stomach with that aspirin, so here's a piece of toast with honey and cinnamon to munch upon."

"Oh, thank you, that would be great." Prue took her hangover cures from her baby sister's hands and went to lay down on the living room couch. She hadn't had a hangover in such a long time since Piper's class reunion and she quickly realized she never missed that. After taking the aspirin with a drink of her water, eating the toast, and putting the ice on her forehead, she closed her eyes and dozed off for a few hours until she started to feel sober again.

_As she regained her senses fully, the fact that her trial was the very next day registered in her mind. In exactly twenty-four hours, she would be talking about her dark past. She had no idea what to say, what to wear, and how to break the news that she was Whitney Berman to her sisters. That must have been why she wanted a few drinks, to make her worries disappear._

"No! I already suffered through that!" she said suddenly, and woke herself up. "Oh, thank god...just a flashback."

"Hey, sister! Feeling better?" Phoebe asked.

Prue looked up at her. "Yeah," she mumbled sleepily.

"Yay! So is Piper, she's back and ready to party! She was a little confused as to how she changed out of her clothes while drunk, but I told her Leo put her back in her pajamas after they, you know. Of course, I don't know if he did or not, but it's not too wild of a guess. I just know we sisters didn't do it, and Coop wouldn't dare, so that just leaves Leo."

"Makes sense. I'm going to take a shower to wash this alcohol stench off me in case Andy comes over again."

"Have a good shower!"

"Thanks!"

...

After Andy's hangover wore off, he met Darryl at the police station.

"Remind me never to get drunk on a weeknight again," Andy told Darryl. "Thanks for helping with the kids and saving my ass at work...I really appreciate it."

"No problem, man. So, you know Anton and Kristina Larsen were taken into custody, right?"

"Yeah, that's what I told Prue last month. These monsters are behind bars as we speak. We should go to the Larsens' place to take pictures of the crime scene and collect evidence of child abuse."

They found tons, from bloodstains on the carpet that matched Ramon's DNA to a dirty, dusty closet filled with maggots and waste.

"Alright, my guess is that bitch left Ramon in here for a few years, since the walls are yellowed and moldy. When he screamed and cried for help, her bastard of a husband gave him physical punishments," Andy said as Darryl snapped pictures of the inside of the closet. He tried to keep his lunch down while he watched his partner examine the evidence. This horrible place reminded him of the basement that Prue had been locked in.

"Put this in a baggie for me, will ya?" Darryl asked and held up a chunk of the wall that had blood on it.

"What I don't understand is why they would do this to their kid. Why would they have a kid if they couldn't take care of one?" Andy asked. He took a plastic bag out of his briefcase and dropped the evidence inside. "Drug addicts," he added and picked up a few bottles of meth laying on the Larsens' nightstand. "This is good for our case."

"Trudeau, some people are stupid. They know the rules, but they disobey them. They know the consequences, but they think they can get away with it. These guys must be really dumb criminals, though, because they let their kid out into the world just a day after he was held captive for years. Of course people would suspect he was being abused."

"You've got a point there, Morris."

...

On Monday, Prue took the kids to daycare by herself and Sheila put her on playground duty. She pushed the children on the swings and smiled at their playful laughter. She ate lunch at noon and fed some babies. Before she knew it, it was three and she went home with Melinda and Parker to see her sisters pulling up in the driveway.

"Mommy home! Me home too!" Melinda said excitedly. "Lookie, Auntie, lookie!" She pointed at Piper's Jeep and the manor.

Prue released her oldest niece from her carseat and then moved onto Phoebe's baby daughter. "Yes, honey one, I see!"

Melinda crawled to the window and pounded on the glass. "Mama!"

"Aaah," Parker said when Prue lifted her out of her carseat.

"Mm, there we go..." Prue opened the car door so Melinda could jump out. She ran to her mommy and Prue followed her with Parker in her arms. "Hey little sisters!"

"Hey!" they greeted her back.

Piper swung Melinda up and into her arms. "Hello there, sweet girl." She kissed her daughter's cheeks.

Phoebe took Parker from Prue and lifted her up in the air. She kissed her baby's tummy. "Hi, princess!"

_Prue wished she had a child of her own, not just a couple nieces, but a daughter or son._ She brushed her thoughts away since she had other things to focus her mind on.

...

It was raining hard as the evening sky went from dark blue to black. Andy was on his way to Prue's house with a movie called _Body Heat_. As he passed through an alleyway, he noticed a young boy who was dressed in rags sleeping against the brick wall. He wasn't on duty and he didn't want to be late for dinner, but he couldn't let this kid sleep another night as a runaway. After parking, he reached into the backseat for his umbrella and overcoat. He walked toward the boy with his umbrella over his head and bent down. Gently, he tapped the boy's shoulder. Immediately, he sat up and Andy was shocked to notice another person wrapped in a blanket.

"I'm sorry, sir. We'll move! Come on, Holly, we gotta go before they take us back!" The blonde boy stood to his feet and he held the little girl upright. She couldn't have been more than five or six and she looked frightened. She chewed on her tangled brown hair.

"Hey, you're not in any trouble. I promise. My name is Andy, I'm a police officer, and I can help you. My friend works for Social Services. I'm also heading to a friend's, but you can sleep over at my apartment."

Holly shrieked and held onto him. "Tyler, don't go, it's a trick!"

"She doesn't like strange men," Tyler explained.

"I have an idea. My friends are women, they own the house I'm going to right now. I'm sure they'll let you stay over at least until Paige can find you a good home. So, Tyler, Holly, how old are you?"

"Nine," Holly mumbled.

"Eleven," Tyler said. "We started a fire and the man named Ludlow hurt us and then we ended up here."

"I'm scared," the little girl squeaked. "The rain is making me cold." She whimpered, and Andy felt their pain. He needed to take them to shelter right away.

"The nice man is gonna take us to a warm house, don't worry, sis. See, he's not even letting the rain hit us."

The children held hands as Andy led them into the backseat of his vehicle. He turned the heater up and drove to the manor. "When was the last time you kids ate?"

"I dunno, we're starving!" Tyler answered him.

"Yeah, we want something yummy, no more liver and horseradish and porridge!"

Andy raised his eyes at their responses. "How long have you been living on the streets?"

"Two weeks," Tyler said sharply.

"We're almost there, okay? If my assumptions are correct, dinner is being served."

"Yay!" Holly sounded cheerful for the first time since Andy met her and her brother.

He called Prue to warn her about the kids, and she picked up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"Prue, it's Andy...I've got two runaway children in the car...they're in desperate need of food, water, and shelter. They were sleeping in the rain."

She gasped. "Oh my god! Those poor kids. Piper is almost finished making dinner, and it's penne with pesto sauce, and she's shoving chocolate chip cookies into the oven right now. There's also leftover burritos in the fridge. They can sleep with me in my bed...wait, are they under ten? I hope they can fit."

"I'm sure they can. Holly is nine, Tyler is eleven. They're too small for their ages, but Tyler looks slightly healthier than Holly. Okay, we're here. See you soon!" He pulled up at the curb.

"See ya!"

The children followed Andy to the manor and they both gasped. "Whoa, baby!"

"That's a mansion!" Tyler shouted in awe.

"More like a palace!" Holly squealed. "I bet a princess lives there."

Andy chuckled softly at their reactions and knocked on the front door. Prue unlocked it from the inside and tugged it open. "The Good Samaritan strikes again," she murmured and smiled at Andy. When the kids cautiously entered the house, they looked up at Prue. She appeared to be in shock, so they spoke first.

"Hello, ma'am," they said in unison.

"I'm Tyler, and this is my little sister Holly. It's a pleasure to meet you." The blonde boy stuck his hand out to her, and she shook it.

"I'm charmed. Just call me Prue. You'll feel right at home here, okay? My sister Piper is making a yummy dinner with desserts afterwards, and my other sister Phoebe is doing her homework, but she'll be down soon."

"Oh! I have to clean here," Holly said with a frown.

"No you don't, sweetie, what you and your brother need to do is relax on the couch, because Andy here tells me that you both are extremely famished and fatigued. Those are just fancy words for tired and hungry."

"Are you a princess?" Holly asked through a giggle. She twirled around on her tiptoes.

"No, honey, I'm not." Andy noticed that Prue was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Awww..." The little girl looked absolutely crestfallen.

"I'm sorry," Prue added bashfully.

"Well, at least you look like one."

Andy couldn't agree more with Holly's statement.

"Thank you!"

Piper announced from the kitchen that dinner was prepared. Prue and Andy went in to get their plates and the children ran after them and skidded to a stop behind Prue's heels. Someone came downstairs and Phoebe walked in the kitchen with Coop.

"Hi, Tyler, Holly, I'm Prue's sister, Piper. She told me you kids would be coming with Andy, and I'm so happy to invite you into our home. You will be very safe here."

"Hi, Ms. Piper!" Holly said enthusiastically.

"Hey." Tyler waved at her. "That's good to know, I guess."

Piper smiled. "I already know your names, because I overheard you guys talking to Prue in the foyer."

"I'm Phoebe, and this is Coop," Phoebe said. The kids shook Piper and Phoebe's hands, but they were still cautious of the men in the room. Andy presumed they'd never been hurt by a woman before, since they seemed to feel very comfortable with the sisters.

After dinner was given to everyone, Holly and Tyler ate hungrily and savored every mouthful. When they finished, they asked for seconds, so Piper started to get up. Andy held up his hand as a motion for her to stop. "I'll get them more food." He felt he had to do something to make the children trust him and know he wasn't a bad man.

"Okay, thank you."

Andy gathered Tyler and Holly's bowls and filled it up with another helping of pasta. He set the bowls down in front of them. "Enjoy, but make sure you don't spoil your appetite. We're having chocolate chip cookies for dessert."

"Yummy!" Holly stabbed a few noodles with her fork and stuffed them into her mouth.

"This is so good!" Tyler added.

"You guys, what do you say to Andy?" Prue asked them with a smile stretched across her face.

"Thank you, sir," they replied.

"You're very welcome," he said. "You don't have to call anyone 'sir' or 'ma'am' in this house, by the way. Just call us by our names."

"Okay, we will," Holly said politely.

"We'll follow your orders so we don't get hurt."

"Tyler, Holly, physical punishments do not exist in this house, we simply teach you right from wrong and that you are allowed to call us whatever you want," Phoebe let them know. "What do you say about watching a movie with us before you go to bed?"

"Sure," they both muttered. When they finished their meals, they waited patiently until they were sitting between Prue and Piper on the couch. Andy sat on the other side of Prue. Phoebe and Coop left the house to buy Holly and Tyler some clothes to change into for bed. They returned thirty minutes later with a nightgown and striped pajamas. The adults and children had a delicious snack of milk and cookies.

Since they couldn't watch _Body Heat_ with kids there, Prue was flipping through the channels to find a movie to watch until she stopped at some program about a beauty pageant. She just stared at the screen in shock and horror. There was a big lump in her chest that threatened to come up to her throat. The little girl walking across the stage holding flowers looked five years old, but with her hair styled in long brown curls that were way too long for any five year old to possibly have, makeup that covered every inch of her body, and earrings that Prue hoped were fake, she looked miserable. She could tell the child was wearing a fake smile, and the man whose hand she was holding looked about fifty years old.

"Why is she with that man?" Prue asked herself. "That is disgusting,"

"And we have a winner…Holly, from San Francisco, California!" The crowd went wild on television.

"That's me!" Holly shouted. "No, no, make it go away!"

It turned Prue's stomach as she realized Holly was forced to join a beauty pageant. Yes, she was adorable with her big brown eyes and long brown hair, but she looked way too fake. Everything they did to her was fake. Tears pooled in Prue's eyes and she wiped them because she didn't want to cry in front of anyone. She also realized that Holly was the same little girl she'd met in _his _closet five years ago, so that meant Holly was her stepdaughter.

"It's okay, sissy, you're not there anymore," Tyler tried to relax Holly.

"Ms. Prue, I didn't like that mean man." Her little body curled up on Prue's lap and she reached up for a hug. Prue put her arms around Holly right away and rubbed her back in soothing circles. She enjoyed Andy gently putting a blanket over them both, and she wrapped the blanket around herself and Holly. The poor girl snuggled deep inside it, and everyone smiled at them sadly.

Prue quickly switched the channel to what looked like the Disney movie, _Halloweentown__. _Although Holly enjoyed the movie, Tyler fell asleep on Piper's shoulder a few minutes into it. When the movie was over, Prue carefully stood up and Holly was still attached to her.

"Tyler, wake up!" Holly said.

"What? Oh, sorry, Piper!" He yawned loudly as he got up.

"It's okay, buddy. You two are exhausted, and who could blame you? Up to bed you go. Come on." Piper gently eased Holly's arms off from around Prue's waist and took the children upstairs. Holly held Piper and Tyler's hands.

"Show them my bedroom, they can sleep there," Prue told Piper.

"Will do."

"I'll save _Body Heat_ for another night," Andy said.

"Okay, that's fine."

"See you tomorrow!"

"Good night, sweet dreams!"

"Thanks, you too!"

He closed the door behind him and Prue locked it. She went upstairs with Phoebe and Coop. They went into their own bedroom and she went into hers to find Piper with Holly.

"Tyler is taking a shower, and Holly is next."

"Sorry we're so dirty," Holly apologized.

"It's okay, don't worry about it," Prue comforted her.

"I don't wanna take a bath by myself. I don't like showers because the man would always touch me in my privates and I can't stand up in a shower good. Can you and Ms. Prue and Ms. Phoebe give me a bath?" Holly asked Piper. She shook her hair out and tried to part it evenly down the middle. "Then later, can I have braids, please? This is hopeless." She couldn't even get her fingers through the snarls in her hair or smooth down her cowlick.

"Yes, we will, honey. We can fix your hair right after your bath," Piper said sweetly.

Tyler came into Prue's room with his pajamas on and his hair combed back neatly. "I feel better now. You guys can help Holly. A mean man hurt her, and she's in a lot of pain."

Prue and Piper nodded. They called for Phoebe, and the three of them took Holly into the bathroom. After Phoebe shut the door, Piper closed the drain and filled the tub with warm water. She added soap to make it a bubble bath, and Prue assisted Holly in taking her clothes off. All three sisters gasped when they saw the bruises all over her and around her privates. They tried not to cry while giving Holly her bath, and they washed her very gently. Prue told her to close her eyes while shampooing her hair, and she did. Piper leaned her back slowly and rinsed Holly's hair. After her bath, Phoebe dried her off and put the nightgown over her head.

"Prue will take care of you, okay? I'm going to bed," Piper said.

"Yeah, same here," Phoebe put in. "Have a good sleep!"

"Night!" Holly told them.

"Thanks for helping me," Holly said as Prue brushed through her wet hair.

"No problem. I love doing hair. I would always fix my sisters' hair when we were children." Prue held down Holly's hair with her hand that wasn't holding the brush.

"This feels different. The man would literally yank the hair out of my head and laugh while I screamed that it hurt. You do it better."

"I would never, ever pull your hair. You still want braids, right?"

Holly nodded, so Prue put two elastic bands around her wrist. There was one knot in the girl's hair that just wouldn't come loose.

"Ouch!"

"Ooh, sorry!" Prue exclaimed. She found the knot and cut it loose with scissors. "There, I fixed it. Now to part your hair...where do you like it? On the side, in the middle...where?"

"Just part it in the middle, please."

Prue's fingers split her hair right down the middle and twisted the hair around her hands. She put one side of Holly's's hair in a loose bun and started braiding the other side from the top, so it would be a French braid. "Wait, do you want a French braid or a regular braid?"

"Either is fine, thanks."

When Prue finished one side, she worked on the other side. After she was finished, she turned Holly to face the mirror. "How does that look?"

Holly turned her head from side to side. "Wow, you're good at French braids. I love it! Thank you!"

"Wait a minute...what if I left out small strands so they hang loosely on each side of your face?"

"That would be okay."

Prue pulled out some loose pieces of hair from the French braid and inspected her work. "Beautiful. You look great!"

Holly smiled and wrapped her arms around Prue's middle. They went back to Prue's bedroom where Tyler was sleeping and got into bed. Pretty soon, both kids were holding onto each other and snuggled in Prue's loving embrace. Holly was sucking her thumb, and Prue decided she'd help her grow out of that habit. _Hopefully she could do it before Holly and Tyler were sent away by social services. Deep inside her heart, she hoped they wouldn't be. Selfish enough as it was, she wanted them for herself and her own family, nobody else's._

The next day, after a meal of blueberry pancakes, Piper took them shopping for clothes since they came with nothing. Apparently, Holly just owned fancy dresses, skirts, and tank tops, and Tyler didn't bother packing anything when they ran away. Prue took Melinda and Parker to daycare. As much as she enjoyed volunteering and caring for children, she wanted a real job with income.

When she was back at home, she looked through the newspaper for want ads and found an opening for Bucklands Auction House. She circled it with a red marker and wondered how she could tell Sheila that she wasn't going to volunteer anymore if she got this job.

...

Andy took Holly and Tyler to South Bay Social Services and told them to wait for him on the bench, so they did. He'd already told Paige about them earlier that morning and he met with her at her desk. She was on the phone, and she held up a finger.

"Okay, thank you. Goodbye. Yes, Andy?"

"Any luck?"

Paige sighed sadly. "No, I'm sorry. Most people want babies or one child...not two. An eleven year old boy is out of the question. They feel Tyler would cause too much trouble. The nine year old girl wouldn't be too bad, but since you told me that Holly has to be with Tyler and she used to be sexually abused, I refuse to separate them. I kept reminding every couple of that. I'm sorry...I'll keep trying. I feel like just giving up and letting them stay at the manor. I trust you guys more than random couples."

Andy looked at Tyler and Holly on the bench. They were swinging their legs back and forth and frantically searching the room with their eyes. He had a soft spot in his heart for them, and he knew Prue and her sisters did too. "Then do that. Prue and I can have joint custody."

"Wait a minute, are you sure?"

"I'm positive. They can live in the manor, and when Holly feels comfortable around the girls and doesn't need Tyler as much, he can sleep over at my apartment."

"I don't want Mr. Cowan thinking I'm just doing this because Phoebe's my best friend and her sisters are my friends as well. You know, personal feelings and all that, I can't let them get in the way of my job."

"Yeah, I get it, but Phoebe wouldn't be adopting them. Technically, Prue and I would be their primary caretakers. Neither of us have kids, so it's perfect."

"You made my job a hundred percent easier. Thank you so much."

"You're welcome."

"Bring Prue here and I'll have you two sign the adoption papers."

Andy gave Paige a short nod. "Alright, we'll see you later."

The children rose from where they were sitting when Andy walked back to them.

"What's gonna happen to us?" Tyler asked.

"Is that lady gonna take us away?" Holly was concerned.

"She said you can stay with Prue and her sisters at the manor."

"Yes!" Tyler said and pumped his fist in the air. Holly clapped her hands with a happy smile on her face.

"Guess what, Mr. Andy? Ms. Prue fixed my hair into braids and I kept them and I didn't want to take them out this morning since I wasn't really sure if I'd ever see her again. Nobody ever did that for me in my life, and I wanted to remember her."

Andy grinned at Holly. "You two are in luck. You'll be seeing her and the rest of us all the time now."

Paige walked over to where Andy and the children were standing. "Hey, guys! So, what are you most looking forward to when you go to your new home?"

"I can't wait to play Barbies and watch cartoons. I'm gonna hug _everyone _and here's one for you!" Holly said and wrapped her arms around Paige's waist. The social worker hugged Holly right back.

"Thank you, sweetie. Now, Tyler...what about you?"

"Video games."

"That's nice...well, I'll be seeing you soon, as Phoebe has her graduation party coming up. I'm her bestie."

Holly jumped up and down. "Yay! Bye bye!"

"Bye," Tyler said dully.

"Alright, let's go, kids." Andy waved goodbye to Paige and gave her a hug.

He took them back to the manor and knocked on the front door. Phoebe answered it, and Andy overheard some of the conversation between Prue and Piper.

"He's been gone a long time, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I miss them already."

"Yeah, so do I," Piper responded sadly. "They were adorable. They never even got to meet my baby or Phoebe's."

Phoebe took notice of Holly and Tyler. "Um, guys, I don't think you need to worry about not seeing them again. They're here with Andy."

Prue and Piper met Phoebe and Andy at the door. The sisters hugged the kids tightly. After the happy reunion, Andy took Prue aside. The smile on her face was so bright and big that he thought she would literally burst from excitement.

"Paige couldn't find a family to adopt the both of them, so I volunteered you and I to have joint custody since Piper and Phoebe already have children and babies on the way. I hope that's okay with you. We'd have to sign some papers to make it official."

"I'm not really ready to be a mom...I would suck at it, and kids need a mom who won't have a panic attack every time some guy makes a flirty remark or a pass at her, so maybe all of us can take care of Holly and Tyler. Would that be okay?"

"Of course. It's just a piece of paper. They only care about the legal stuff and who would be the guardians. We all love Tyler and Holly to pieces."

"They don't care if we're not a married couple, or even a dating couple?"

"Nope."

"Oh, boy, I really need this job now if I want to prove to social services that I'm capable of taking care of two young kids." Prue showed him a page in the newspaper and a section she'd circled. "How should I break it to Sheila? I feel bad, but it's just volunteering."

"Just tell her you got hired at..." Andy glanced at the name of the workplace. "Bucklands Auction House. Wait, you'd want to work at an auction house?"

"Yeah, why? My sisters already gave me crap about following my dream of being a photographer, so don't you start. Besides, there's nothing else available. Photography is a promising hobby, but I want to get paid."

"I'll support you in whatever job you choose. I just don't want you selling yourself short."

"Piper and Phoebe told me something similar to that a while ago. I know all you guys worry about me and that's so kind of you, but really, the auction house can't be _that_ bad. Job positions are starting on..." Prue squinted and looked closer at the page. "Oh my god, next Monday! There's an interview this Friday...I'm going to go there."

"Are you having trouble seeing the words?"

"Yeah, it's such small print. I'll have to buy some reading glasses. Oh well, now all of us sisters will have glasses. Phoebe needs them for school, and Piper had them before...I hope I look okay with them on. God, this is blurry!"

It turned out Prue needed reading glasses just to sign the adoption papers with Andy at Paige's office, so he took her to buy them. After Prue and Andy left, he said, "You look smart and sophisticated in those glasses."

"Thank you. I am really nervous about this interview...and what if the boss makes me wait? What if I'm late, I rush, and then the boss ends up being late and I've just hurried for nothing? I'm a newbie at this whole job thing. Last time I had one, I had an in since I slept with the boss." Prue cringed.

"I'll pick you up," Andy offered.

"No, it's okay, don't miss work, I don't want to feel like I'm infringing..."

"Darryl can cover for me."

"He's gonna get really sick of doing that, but you can just meet me on my floor, okay?"

"Okay," Andy agreed. "So, tell me why you're taking this job again."

Prue rolled her eyes. "Income and social services." She started to walk to his car, but then stopped in her tracks. "Whoa, I forgot to take these off!" She removed her glasses from her face and put them back in their case.

After they went back to South Bay Social Services to sign the adoption papers, Paige said, "I need to ask you guys a few questions about Holly and Tyler. I noticed that Holly acts younger than her actual age, and Tyler is very closed up. Do they behave that way at home?"

"Holly only seems brave in front of women, and Tyler really only talks to her," Andy reported.

"Holly sucked her thumb when she was sleeping, and Tyler doesn't say much. Do you think those are just phases and they're shy in front of strangers because they've been abused and don't really trust anyone?" Prue asked.

"Well, they're traumatized. They're not going to act like typical children their age, naturally. I would suggest you get them therapy, and in fact, one of my friends, Ella Madriz, is one of the best child psychologists in San Francisco." Paige gave Prue a small business card with the woman's name and number on it. "Call her as soon as you can and schedule a meeting. She'll get back to you right away."

"Thank you for this," Prue told Paige and hugged her.

"Anytime."

...

It was Friday morning and Prue couldn't believe she quit her volunteering job at Adleberry Daycare without making enemies. She also was so worried about her interview that she by mistake spilled coffee on her blouse, had to change her clothes, and she ended up running late.

She quickly drove to the place, parked her car in the lot, and speedily walked towards the building as fast as she could in her heels. As she rushed to catch the elevator, she tripped over the threshold and lost hold of her purse. She reached up to press the button labeled twelve and scrambled around the floor of the elevator to get the contents of her purse that had spilled out when she dropped it. As one of the men helped her gather her things, the other three men were wolf whistling at her.

"Well, well, look who it is!"

"What's your name, sweet thing? Oh never mind, we all already know...you're Prue Halliwell, otherwise known as Whitney Berman!"

"Those men sure got lucky when they had you around."

"Let's play with her a little..."

She bit her lip as one of the slimy men positioned himself right behind her. "Exactly how tall are you anyway, short stuff?" He put his hand on her head and thumped it with his fingers. "I'm assuming about five feet, three inches. That's right, we've seen your missing person signs all over the city."

"She looks so vulnerable, I find it quite sexy," another man said.

A fourth man got on from the third floor. "Fellas, what's going on?"

"Forget about Stacy's mom, this woman's got it going on...but I can't join the game since I own this establishment."

"We're just getting started."

"It's only the third floor..."

Prue reached inside her purse to call Andy to prevent herself from having a panic attack. She was well aware that she was in a stuffy, confined area filled with sleazy men. _Of all the rotten luck_!

"Feel how soft she is..."

"She's a nice little treat after all that construction we've been doing on the building."

"If the elevator got stuck, we'd all fight over her for some loving because she's the only good looking piece of meat."

Prue's breath hitched in her chest and she felt a lump attempting to fight its way out of her throat. She backed up nervously as they circled around her and cornered her. "Andy, I'm freaking out! I'm the only woman on this elevator, I swear to God...and I have to go up nine more floors! I wish I could just speed the elevator up using my eyes. That would be really cool." She put her hand over the speaker so she could have privacy.

"Focus on the numbers, stare at the ceiling, and listen to my voice. You'll do great at this job. You'll get it."

"They're all staring at me!" she cried.

"Want me to pretend I'm your boyfriend who just so happens to be a sumo wrestler?"

"No," she laughed weakly and imagined them holding hands in front of everyone. "Just be my best friend and bodyguard."

They were touching her hair and sniffing her face. She had nowhere to run. She gulped as a man stroked her throat and the undersides of her jaw with his thumb and index finger.

"She's just so squishy and squeezable like a rag doll!" one of the men drawled while clawing at her breasts.

"I wonder how they feel uncovered."

"Let's see her tits!"

"You're such a woman with curves in all the right places."

"That skirt is giving me a big boner."

"Just look at our pants, feel them sticking out there."

They forced her to touch the tents growing in their pants. One of them fished through her purse and found her lipstick. "Wonder how she tastes...I've never been jealous of a tube of lipstick before...or clothes, for that matter."

"I wanna know what color your bra is and I hope you're wearing a thong under that tight skirt of yours."

"I like your high heels...too bad you can't really walk in them."

"Just did that to impress the boss, huh?"

The owner of Bucklands laughed and clasped his hands behind his head while laying back on the wall. "This is great entertainment, gentlemen, but make sure she doesn't slip out of your hands!"

"She's just not really saying anything..."

Prue fell to the ground on her knees and curled into herself with her arms over her head. She'd learned to protect herself this way. _It'll be over soon. It'll be over soon. _She silently screamed when she felt them kick her. It only jostled her enough so she rolled to one side. She kept herself guarded. _Just breathe through the pain._

Another man wound his meaty arms around her torso and pulled her hands back behind her body. "Not so fast, little lady." He yanked her to her feet and tightened his grasp on her wrists.

"We like you too much."

"Mm-hm, you got a fine ass body, sugar."

They licked their lips and she froze in place. Her phone was on the ground and she wanted to pick it back up, but she couldn't. "Prue? Prue, are you still there?"

Her stomach twisted in knots and her eyes filled with tears. "Andy, help," she wept.

"She looks a bit too tense..."

"She'd be so easy to kidnap or fuck...wouldn't you, hot stuff?" They took turns slapping her butt, but the boss just stood there. She felt one of them pinch her butt and say, "Nice and round!"

"Andy!" She struggled against their restraining arms as they fondled her. "No, please don't! No! Stop!" More tears leaked out of her eyes and decorated her cheeks. They dripped down her jaw and mixed into her hair. Her heart was pounding so fast that she couldn't catch her breath.

"Oh my, whatever are you going to do? Andy's not gonna help you! He's not even here!"

_Yes he is. She would see him on her floor._

"Stop it! Stop it!" she continued to scream as they taunted her.

The man who wasn't touching her got her phone off the floor and hung up on Andy. She jumped up and grabbed for her phone, but he held it up high and tossed it to another man.

"Let's play monkey in the middle with her."

Finally, the elevator chimed to signal that they were on the last floor. She heard the most handsome voice call out, "I believe the lady said to stop. Lay off her."

The man who had her phone gave it back to her. Prue ran into Andy's arms and wailed, "They were touching me...they grabbed my hands, and I couldn't get away!" Her breath shuddered and she shook with silent cries as Andy held her tightly. She glanced up at him for a second and noticed he was glaring at the repulsive men who had just been sexually harassing her.

"Aw, come on, it was harmless fun, we wanted to tease her a bit..."

"She wasn't enjoying it, was she? Leave her alone or deal with me." He gritted his teeth and shook his fist at them. "If any of you sickos want a smashed in face, continue this abhorrent behavior. That is a warning."

"Prue Halliwell, it's time for your interview with Rex Buckland," a woman's voice barked, and Prue sniffled. She was sure she wouldn't get the job since her face was a mess from her crying.

"Can I go to the bathroom to clean up first? I've been sort of upset."

"He wants to see you right now, that's what he said."

Prue chewed on her bottom lip. "I'm sorry." She wiped her cheeks with the palms of her hands but then a snot bubble came out of her nose when she breathed. "Damnit," she swore under her breath. The woman rolled her eyes as Prue took Kleenex out from her purse and blew her nose.

"Good luck, Prue, blow them away," Andy said.

"Thanks, but I doubt that I'll get it. Bye." She hugged him and then followed the woman into a room where the boss was sitting at a table.

"Thank you for bringing her, Hannah. Ms. Halliwell, have a seat. My name is Rex Buckland." He shook her hand, and she wondered how he got away so fast as to not get caught by Andy. _Chicken_.

"It's nice to meet you," she said, feigning politeness.

"I assume you have a lot of experience in many art pieces, as you will need to explain where they come from and what time period."

"Oh, yes, I do. For example..." Prue looked around the room for something until she found a copy of the Monet painting. "That's not the original."

Rex looked interested. "I'm hiring a wanted woman, eh?"

Prue hoped he wouldn't continue to pester her, and she looked down at the table uncomfortably. _At least she got the job, but if this got around, she'd be the laughingstock of the workplace._

"I heard about your fun ride in the elevator," Hannah said haughtily with a snort. "You start Monday."

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: TVADDiCT11, Aviva426, and Shelley101! Happy 15th Anniversary, Charmed!**


	8. Adjustments

**Thank you to SwiftyGirl7474 and invisibleinkstains for beta'ing, and TVADDiCT and Aviva426 for prereading!**

"This weekend is going to be very busy. I have my graduation tonight, my party tomorrow night, and hanging out with everyone tomorrow during the day," Phoebe told Piper as they cleaned up the breakfast dishes.

"Yeah, I know...I'm surprised that we managed to fit in an appointment for Holly and Tyler to see a child therapist this afternoon. Should we go with Prue? We all have time, and it'll give us a chance to know their story a bit more."

"We definitely should. It's great that our babies love them like their own big sister and brother."

"Why wouldn't they?"

Melinda and Parker were interacting with Holly and Tyler like they had been siblings all their lives. It was very nice for Piper and Phoebe to see. Over the last few days, the sisters bought their adoptive niece and nephew video games and Barbie dolls. They already had balls, bats, and tennis rackets in the attic.

"You have my nannie." Melinda showed Holly and Tyler her banana.

"That was very nice of you, sweetheart," Piper praised her.

"Mommy, can we take them out for ice keam?" Melinda asked. "Pleeeeeeease?"

Piper giggled softly and said, "Of course we can go out for ice cream."

"Mrs. Phoebe, can I hold Parker in the big chair?" Holly asked.

"Yes, you may, sweetie."

Holly sat down in a chair and Phoebe set Parker into the young girl's lap. "Does she like to bounce?"

"She loves it."

Parker waved her rattle and smiled while Holly jiggled the baby on her knees. The nine-year-old also played peek-a-boo with the little ones.

When Piper and Phoebe introduced Holly and Tyler to their daughters, there was excitement for just the girls. Holly was delighted to have someone to take care of because she hated being the baby all the time, but Tyler felt like the odd man out. Whenever Piper, her sisters, Leo, or Coop asked him what was wrong, he would always complain that he was the only boy. He was sulking in a corner and Piper decided to talk to him.

"Ty, is there anything we can do to make you feel better?"

"I don't want to go to a stupid therapist. I don't even need one. We're in a good home now, even though I don't have boys my age to play soccer with and Leo and Coop are too busy to hang out with me. Not even my adoptive parents are here. You and Phoebe are, but you probably have work like Leo and Coop."

"I own a club, but I don't do much during the day, except take care of Melinda when she's finished at daycare. Phoebe has just finished school and is looking for work. Prue had a job interview today. Didn't you have fun going with me to Leo's work for the past two days?"

"Yeah, but he couldn't give me a piggyback ride," Tyler said glumly. "Also, Holly was with Melinda and watching her and you were talking to him. I was shy."

"I'm sorry. Leo will be home all day on the weekends and I'm sure he'd love to give you a piggyback ride. Andy and Coop also don't work on the weekends so I bet they'd want to play sports with you then. As for boys your own age, hmm...my friend has a son who's eight and he loves to play video games and baseball. There's many kids in the neighborhood we could get you acquainted with. As for the therapist, she can help you and Holly overcome your difficulties so you don't get any more nightmares. Whatever you speak to the therapist about, it's between you and her and your family."

Tyler folded his arms across his chest. "I don't get nightmares," he said stubbornly. "Ludlow only hit me when I tried to protect Holly from him. He didn't do it because he hated me, he just wanted to hurt Holly."

"You had to grow up too quickly and be both a big brother and a father figure to Holly. I know this because Prue sacrificed her own childhood to help our Grams raise Phoebe and I since our mom died and our dad left us."

"That doesn't mean I need a therapist!" he argued.

"Alright...you are just like Prue. Once she sets her mind on something, she won't change her decision. That's not a bad thing, but my sisters and I want the best for you. I can tell you're hurting...if not for us, would you at least go for your sister?"

"Fine, whatever."

Piper put her hands on her hips. "Thank you."

"Sure."

"Do you want to watch television with your sister and your cousins?"

"No, I'm gonna stay here."

"You have to get dressed and brush your teeth because at noon, we're going out for ice cream and then we're going to go to the therapist."

"Alright, alright," he grumbled and stood up. He trudged upstairs and Piper sighed.

"Tyler is a tough nut to crack!"

Phoebe looked up from where she was playing with the girls. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think he was Prue's son."

"What should we do? I don't think we should pressure him for anything anymore...we're supposed to be his adoptive _aunts_, not his mother. We're supposed to spoil him and let his mother tell him what to do. Hopefully Prue and Andy can get through to him."

"We can talk to them about it...hey, Piper, how much you wanna bet that Prue and Andy will rekindle their romance by, say, next month or the month after?"

"Isn't betting a little childish?"

"Aw, you're no fun."

"I don't think Prue is ready to jump back into the dating game anytime soon. She needs a lot of time to trust men."

"She's gained Andy's trust ever since he saved her from the basement. You know how she acts around him. She'd never say it, but she likes him. She's shy, she giggles after he goes home, she's in dreamland...that's a crush. Remember her at thirteen?"

"Yeah, but we don't know exactly how long it will take them to fall back in love."

"We can predict the future, though! Besides, Andy's not just any old guy, he's well, Andy, our best childhood friend and her high school sweetheart!"

_Piper couldn't argue with that. _"Yeah, I know, but we should let it play out like we did when we were kids, minus the teasing her part."

"They are destined to be forever in love. They've got to rekindle their romance soon, and I think we can will it if we assume what month they'll be getting back together! We can be matchmakers."

_Phoebe, always the dreamer. _"Okay, maybe their kids can be a good help in that department. He would have to let her make the first move."

"Yeah, exactly...and I'm guessing they will start a relationship very soon, like next month."

"What if you're wrong?" Piper challenged her baby sister with a smirk.

"Then you are free to tell me the same thing Paige told me when Cole dumped me, which is 'I told you so'."

The door unlocked and Prue walked in. _Oh, speak of the devil_.

"How was your interview?" Piper asked her.

"Good news is, I got the job. Bad news…they all make fun of me-the secretary, the boss, and some creeps I ran into on the way to work in the elevator! I may have found a solution to that problem…I'll simply go to work early to avoid the men in the elevator. They're doing construction on the building, and I don't want to be bothered worrying about them."

"You shouldn't have to inconvenience yourself because of stupid horny construction workers, but congratulations on getting the job," Phoebe said.

"Thank you. It's not a problem going early. I can get more work done and I won't have a panic attack every morning like I did _this_ morning."

"Oh no, they tried touching you?" Piper was concerned.

"Not tried, they _did_ touch me. They knew who I was and I felt like our classroom pet we would poke year after year in grade school. I was on display and to make matters worse, not one single woman was on that elevator." Prue threw her purse on the table so it made a _bang_. "Did I do something to piss God off?"

"You could always work somewhere else," Phoebe suggested.

"No, I'm not wimping out of this. I'm showing them what I'm made of next time. You do not give Prue Halliwell a panic attack and get away with it!"

"Oooh, you go girl," Piper said and gave Prue a hi-five.

"There's our strong big sister we know and love!" Phoebe added.

"Only because I'm prepared for what's to come. I was a weak coward in that elevator just like I was when I was with _him_. I can't believe I didn't even try fighting them off...they didn't even want to abuse me or anything...they just wanted to do what drunk frat boys do to innocent college girls, which is not keep their hands to themselves."

Piper looked at Phoebe with a sympathetic smile. "How immature."

"Prue!" Holly said cheerfully and ran up to her adoptive mother. Prue bent down and gave Holly a big hug.

"How are you, sweetie?"

"I'm good. I played with Melinda and Parker all morning long and then Piper's gonna take us out for ice cream and then a lady's gonna talk to me and Tyler. He's really grumpy, though. He won't come out of his room!"

"Really? Why don't we go see him?"

"Okay!"

Prue took a hold of Holly's hand and they walked up the stairs together.

"They're a cute pair," Phoebe commented.

"Yeah, they are...I think Holly and Tyler are perfect matches for Prue and Andy. They make a nice family, all four of them."

"Mm-hm."

After the sisters got the children dressed and ready for the day, they went out for ice cream and drove in two separate cars-Piper took Phoebe and their girls, while Prue took her own adoptive kids. They got an extra large brownie sundae with Oreo ice cream, bananas, whipped cream, and sprinkles on top for all six of them to share. Parker sat in her highchair and Phoebe fed her a mashed banana. Melinda had chocolate all over her face and she and Holly were licking their spoons. Piper brought baby wipes and used them to clean Melinda's face. Holly ran her tongue around her lips and rubbed the chocolate ring around her mouth off with a napkin.

"Yummy, yummy in my tummy," Holly sang as Tyler wiped his hands on his jeans.

Melinda tickled Parker's belly and they both giggled.

Since Piper, Prue, and Phoebe split the cost, the children thanked them. They dropped Parker and Melinda off at daycare and when they got to the therapist's office, they asked for Ella Madriz. A woman who was a slight resemblance to Piper but with glasses came into the waiting room and called, "Holly and Tyler Halliwell."

"That's you guys." Prue faced Ella. "Can we all go in with them?"

"Yes, you may. Follow me! Oh, and I'm so happy that Paige recommended me."

"She said you were the best child psychologist there was," Phoebe told her.

"She would know. She's a social worker," Piper said.

"Oh, she is? I'm so proud of her and how far she's come. I'd love to see her again. Anyway, come on in here."

_Did Ella know Paige as a child? Piper knew Paige had a past with her parents dying in a car accident, but was there something else?_

Tyler and Holly shyly trailed in after Ella. Piper and her sisters sat on the side of the room on a bench while Ella sat in a comfortable chair. She instructed Holly and Tyler to sit on the couch opposite her.

"Now, kids, my name is Ella, but you may call me Miss Ella if you want. Which one of you would like to begin?"

Holly raised her hand. "Pick me please, Miss Ella!"

Ella smiled. "Okay, go ahead, honey."

"What do I say?"

"Tell us your story. This is confidential, so whatever is said in this room stays in this room."

Prue cleared her throat. "I have a question."

"Yes?"

"My friend is her adoptive father, would it be fine if I told him their story? He couldn't be here since he works as a police officer."

"You can tell him whatever you think he may need to know, but Holly, Tyler, is that okay with you?"

"Yeah," the kids said in unison.

"I'm Piper, and this is Phoebe, as you probably already know. We're Prue's sisters, so we would be Holly and Tyler's adoptive aunts...is it alright if we tell my fiancé and Phoebe's husband what happened to them?"

Ella nodded. "Relatives can protect a child as much as a parent can, adoptive or biological. The more they know, the more they can be of help. So, Holly, can you tell me what you like to do during playtime?"

"My new mommy named Prue and my new aunties, Piper and Phoebe, they got me a lot of Barbies and I play with them and I like to play with my little sisters too. I also like to watch the Powerpuff Girls."

"Who's your favorite?"

"Bubbles!"

"Cool. What kinds of things do you do with the Barbies?"

"I make them talk to each other and Melinda plays the baby but sometimes she's my little sister and Parker is the baby. I'm always the mommy or the big sister."

"Very nice. What is your favorite color?"

"Pink, pink, and more pink... then purple and then green and then blue, in that order. I wanna be a princess when I get older."

"Like most little girls."

"My brother wants to be the king of the jungle. I told him too bad he's not an animal."

Ella chuckled. "Would you like to show me how you play with your dolls? I have some..." The therapist turned around and pulled out a few dolls from a basket. "They're right here. Okay, here's a Ken doll, a Kelly doll, and a Tommy doll."

Holly made the Ken doll hit the Kelly doll's bottom and then she made the Tommy doll push the Ken doll away. "My brother always protected me from that mean man. Can I have a Barbie doll though? I wanna do another one."

Ella mashed her lips together. "There you go." She handed Holly a Barbie doll. As Holly made the Barbie doll interact with the Kelly doll, Piper noticed that Prue was starting to tear up.

"I remember there was a nice lady from a long time ago. It was _her_, Miss Ella!" She pointed at Prue. Piper and Phoebe looked at their older sister for an explanation.

"How can she be so sure it was you?" Piper whispered.

"Maybe you remind her of her birth mom and she picked you out as the woman she remembered because she _wants_ it to be you," Phoebe put in.

"No, no, she...she's my stepdaughter. I'm positive she is. She looks exactly like she did when she was four. She hasn't changed one bit, poor baby."

Piper felt a jolt go through her as she looked from the little girl sitting on the floor to Prue._Somehow it all made sense. Prue and Holly must have had a connection when they first met, and five years later, Holly went straight into Prue's arms for comfort._

"Where did you see Prue?" Ella asked.

"She was in a room and she opened my closet door. It was really stinky in there...and my daddy told her to go away and then he hurt her really bad!" Holly threw the Ken doll across the room. "He's a mean man! He sold me to that mean man so Prue couldn't try to run away with me. The mean man didn't let me go to school but he let my brother go...he made me do gross things and beauty shows..." Holly laid down on the floor and kicked her feet. She pounded the floor with her fists and sobbed, "I hate Ludlow! I hate Daddy!"

"Not you," Prue gasped softly. "You're so young."

Holly looked like she was about to hurl. Piper tried not to get too emotional while she was listening, but it was hard. She and her sisters had red eyes, their bodies were quivering, and she wanted to scoop Holly up and take her out of this place so she wouldn't have to relive any more horrible memories. Ella blinked a few times and wiped her eyes.

"Okay, this is good. You're letting your anger out, and you will feel much better after this. Why don't we talk about happy things now?"

Holly sat up and wound her hair around her hand. "Like what?"

"I know what you like to do with your cousins and that Tyler looks after you. What do you enjoy doing with Prue, Piper, and Phoebe?"

"My new mommy named Prue and my new aunties, Piper and Phoebe, hold me when we're watching television and Prue lets me sleep in her bed. She kissed me on my cheek and I finally felt loved. She also kisses my head when she tells me good night and when I have nightmares, she hugs me tight. I get a lot of lipstick kisses from her, Piper, and Phoebe, and sometimes, they make me giggle! The other men are nice too and they never touched my privates. So I like all the grown ups I've seen since me and Tyler went to Prue's house. They make a kid's life fun."

Ella beamed. "I'm happy to hear that. That's the first step to healing and resiliency in children-having a loving family around you for support and nurturing. Tyler, would you like to say anything?"

"I guess I should... someone sold me to a man named Ludlow and Holly came to us when she was four. Ludlow wanted her only for sexual favors and he entered her into a beauty pageant. She's never been to school, so I tutored her in secret but just up until second grade. We ran away after Holly set a stove on fire since she was cooking and got nervous-she always had to cook and clean for our master-and when she'd get sexually abused, I would try to beat up Ludlow and I'd get beat up myself in the process."

"It's so hard for me to see you kids like this," Prue sobbed.

"You're crying like somebody died," Tyler said. "Stop."

"I'm sorry...I'm so upset for you two..."

"Would you be emotional someplace else? You're making me upset."

"Sorry," Prue said again. "It just hurts me."

Piper bit her lip to stop herself from letting more tears fall down her cheeks. She knew she and her sisters had to be strong for Holly and Tyler. Ludlow ruined them just like Berman broke Prue.

"You are an excellent big brother," Ella said to Tyler.

"No, I'm not, I didn't get her away from him fast enough and couldn't think up a good plan to get out until a few weeks ago!"

"The important thing is you tried, and you did succeed. You two are strong, I can see that in you. How did you get to Prue's house?"

"This cool guy, Andy, he found us. He's a police officer, so we had to get off the street like he said. He didn't want us to be in the cold and rain and he knew we were sleepy and hadn't eaten in days. He's friends with Prue, so he brought us to her house. He's our new dad, by the way."

"Why aren't they married?" Holly asked, and Phoebe smiled behind her hand. "You know, our new mommy and our new daddy?"

"That's great! I'm happy Andy saved you both from your rough situation. Holly, families vary. Some parents are married, some separated, and some dating. I suppose in Andy and Prue's situation, they're...dating or divorced?" She looked at Prue with questions in her eyes.

"Neither, we're just friends. Joint custody thing," Prue quickly explained.

"I see. Your parents are sharing the responsibility of you two but they are not a married couple. That's still a family, since they respect and care about you. Tyler, what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?"

"I want a bike, but I've never really asked for one. I also want video games and I'd love to play sports, but I don't have friends. Everyone around me is a lady or a girl, and all the guys are at work."

"You can still be friends with women and girls, you know. Boys and girls, men and women, they make the best of friends. Mother-son bonding is just as important as father-son bonding. Siblings are fun to hang out with too."

"No, you don't understand! Prue and her sisters tell me what to do, because they're adults. Holly and the babies like girl stuff like Barbies and pink. That's boring!"

"I thought you had fun with us today, though, when we went out for ice cream?" Piper asked hopefully. "That's a mixed gender activity. Also, there are a lot of sports that are for both boys and girls."

"We have plenty of time to get you and Holly together for a good old game of basketball or we could all go bowling...and you could teach us a few video games," Prue chimed in.

"Yeah, the ice cream was good. It's just awkward since I'm the only guy."

"Coop comes home at five and Andy always makes nightly visits to the manor, so that's no excuse," Phoebe said.

"I don't want to interrupt your time with your husband, Phoebe. I really want man-to-man time with Andy, since he's my adoptive dad, but it seems like he's been talking to Prue a lot or he just stays for dinner. Leo's pretty cool, too, but he works too much. I can't leave Holly, though, since she'll think I'm gone forever. Can't Andy just live in the manor with us?"

"You wouldn't be intruding into any of our lives," Piper assured him. "Andy has his own apartment, but whenever you and Holly feel comfortable being away from each other, you can sleep over there."

"Does that sound good, Tyler?" Ella asked.

"Yeah...I could try to get someone to play video games with me tonight after Phoebe's graduation. Everyone will be at the manor then, right?"

"Yes," Prue said. "Ella, do you have any ideas on how to get Holly to stop sucking her thumb when she's sleeping?"

"That is a good question. You could buy her a plush doll or stuffed animal to hold onto for a distraction. Some people put bandaids on their kids' thumbs because they won't like the taste of the bandaid and they drop the habit, but that doesn't always work, since they might put another finger in their mouth, and you obviously can't bind their hands."

"I want a dolly!" Holly said. "Raggedy Ann is my favorite."

"I can get that for you, Miss Holly," Prue said and squeezed her adoptive daughter's shoulders lovingly.

"Yay!"

"Okay, I think we're finished here. I will see you guys next week, and I'll try to invite kids your age here so you can make friends."

"Thank you," Phoebe told Ella and the sisters shook Ella's hand.

On their way home, they went to a bike shop and bought two bikes-a dark blue one for Tyler, and a bright pink one for Holly. They'd teach the children how to ride their bikes safely around the neighborhood. They also purchased a Raggedy Ann doll and Holly held it while skipping down the sidewalk.

"This is my new baby, everyone!" she announced. "What should I name her?"

"How about Lily?" Prue asked.

"Yeah, that was our imaginary fairy friend when we were little," Phoebe added.

"We drew pictures of her all the time," Piper said.

Holly held her doll up in the air. "Do you like your new name, Lily?" She waited for a moment. "She likes her name, she said so. Say hi, everyone. It's not nice if you don't answer her. She's crying because she thinks you're ignoring her."

"Hi, Lily!" everyone said together.

"She's all better now." Holly kissed her doll's cheek and played with her hair. "I love you, Lily." She looked at Tyler. "She said she loves me too. We're best friends forever."

...

"Why are you leaving early _again_?" Dr. Griffiths asked.

"It's my sister-in-law's graduation, and she wants her whole family there."

"Well, at least you weren't distracted at lunch today."

Leo knew that Piper and her sisters were busy with Tyler and Holly. He couldn't wait to spend the weekend with them all. He got a ride from Piper to Phoebe's graduation. Melinda and Parker were in the backseat.

"Hi, Daddy!" Melinda shouted.

"Hey, babe," Piper said and kissed him lightly on his lips. They pulled apart and she stepped on the gas. "Prue, Andy, and their kids are in her car, and Phoebe took Coop and Paige. They're all meeting us there."

"I love how you're so organized. You probably have this whole weekend mapped out."

"Thank you."

"Where would I be without you?"

"Dazed and confused," Piper teased him. "Maybe a little on the messy side."

Leo laughed at their playful banter. "Don't you like when I'm dirty?"

Piper slapped his chest. "Not in front of such young ears!"

"Be careful," he cautioned her. "Can you put both hands on the wheel, please?"

"Okay, sorry. I know you're sensitive to that."

"No, I apologize, I should trust you, just not myself."

"My hands are at ten and two, and they'll stay that way." When she pulled up to the curb, she and Leo helped their little girl and niece out. They went inside the auditorium of Phoebe's college and found their seats. Leo sat between Piper and Coop. On the other side of Piper was Prue, Holly, Tyler, and then Andy. Melinda sat in Leo's lap while Piper held the youngest member of their family. Paige was next to Andy. They clapped when Phoebe's name was called and they cheered when a diploma was pressed into her hand.

For extra credit, Phoebe was to give a speech at graduation about who inspired her the most. It was supposed to be five minutes long. When it came time for her speech, she didn't appear to be nervous, but she cleared her throat a few times to get herself started. Piper, Prue, Leo, Andy, Paige, Coop, and the kids gave her thumbs-up for encouragement. She gave them a small smile back and laughed nervously under her breath.

"Hello, class of 2000. I am honored to be here after three years of not graduating. But look on the bright side, I finally got a diploma."

Everyone chuckled lightly and waited patiently for her to go on.

"My name is Phoebe Arlove-formerly Phoebe Halliwell, and I would like to share with you about who inspires me the most. My sisters Prue and Piper, my best friend Paige, and of course my husband Coop Arlove have helped me through tough times these past five years. What tough times you may ask? Well, I'll tell you. For five years, Prue has been missing, as all of you probably know, and I've never missed someone so much in my life. I couldn't go back to school for a while because of this. She was presumed dead, but Piper and I refused to believe that. We knew she was out there and we hoped she'd come back to us. Our wish was fulfilled last month. Coop and I…we met at a car shop last year and we've been together ever since. He's the sweetest guy I've met in my twenty-five years and he loves me for me, not for my body. Piper, you are my sun, because when I'm down, you always have something to say to cheer me up. Prue, you love to take Piper, Paige, and I shopping, and that makes me happy. Also, thank you for taking care of Piper and I when Mom passed on. I'm sorry for being such a burden on you, but know that I'll help you out and be in charge too. You're the best mom anyone could ever have. Paige, I know I called you a bitch five years ago when we fought about me going out with Cole, but know that I never meant it. I was the bitch, okay? I was foolish but I was only following you. You girls comfort me when I'm down and you're great shopping partners. Piper, I'm so glad you found Leo and you two are getting married next month. You totally deserve each other. I'm so proud of you for standing through all that pain of Prue being gone for five years. I am honored to be your bridesmaid. Also, Prue, thank you for bailing me out of detention that time. I love you all."

By the end of her speech, the Halliwells and Paige were in tears and wiping their eyes. Everyone clapped and cheered and even Phoebe was crying a little. Then, the ceremony was over. Phoebe and the rest of her class tossed up their hats in the air and cheered.

She sat down next to Coop and he took her hand and said, "Beautiful speech, Phoebe."

"Thanks," she sniffled. Her sisters and Paige gave her hugs, and then so did Leo, Andy, and Coop. "Well, now that that's over..."

"My baby shower," Piper reminded herself. "Everyone's coming, right?"

"Yes, all of your guests are coming," Leo said and put his hands on her shoulders. He kissed the top of her head. "That's not until almost September, though."

"I know, but I'm excited."

"Hey, speaking of baby showers...I'm having twins. I just found out," Paige announced.

"Congratulations!" Phoebe exclaimed.

"No, this is bad, I'll be double the weight!"

"At the end, it's double the love and double the cuteness," Prue said and held Holly and Tyler close to her sides.

"Easy for you to say, you adopted them and you're a skinny little thing," Piper murmured. "I feel you, Paige. I look stupid in maternity wear since I'm starting to show, and I stood on the scale last night...the numbers still haven't changed. Not to mention nausea, the constant bathroom breaks, the urge to vomit..."

"Okay, okay, you've scared me enough," Paige cut in.

"You look beautiful, no matter what you wear," Leo told Piper with honesty in his tone. He kissed her cheek. "Don't say you're fat, because you're not."

"See? This is why I'm marrying this guy!" Piper said happily. "Leo, you were sent from above, I swear." She pulled him down for a breathtaking kiss. "Prue, Paige, find a guy like him."

"Or him," Phoebe said and tapped her husband's shoulder. Coop had his arms around her waist and he kissed the side of her head.

"You know, this is weird. I always thought I'd get married first, then Piper, and lastly, Phoebe, not the other way around. Technically, I _did _get married first, but that time didn't count since I wasn't in love," Prue said quietly.

"You had your first kiss before them, so that has to count for _something_," Andy told her.

"Yeah, I doubt Piper and Phoebe kissed anyone when they were twelve and ten."

Everyone had to agree with that.

"I was thinking we could play a game-boys versus girls basketball game." Tyler said. "Is that okay?"

Leo smiled and he and Piper looked at each other mischeviously. "I'd love to, what do you think, guys?"

"Mmm, great idea!" Piper said. "It's dark now, but we can play in the morning. See you at the basketball court in Holly Park."

"Hey, that's my name," Holly giggled.

"That's why I picked that place."

"Oh, you are so on," Prue said to Andy. He raised his eyebrows at her and shook his head.

"I'll bring my basketball," Andy told the group.

"I'm not letting you win," Phoebe told Coop.

"I hope the teams are even...there's four women and a little girl on our team, and three men and a young boy on your team...are you gonna play, Melinda?" Paige asked.

"Daddy can help me with the ball," Melinda said. "The baby can't play, she too little."

"Aw, darn it, I was hoping Parker would be our referee," Coop joked.

"Ba!" Parker replied.

...

Piper put her hair up and got ready to play. She and her sisters saw Andy dribbling his basketball when they got to Holly Park. He was shooting hoops and Prue wouldn't quit staring at him.

"He is so good," she gushed.

"Stop undressing him with your eyes," Phoebe said in a hushed whisper.

"Shut up! That's not what I was thinking _at all_. I've just never seen him play basketball since high school, and it looks like he's still got it."

_Yeah right_. _Prue probably wanted to see him shirtless_. "Right, keep talking, sister," Piper said with a chuckle.

The kids were following Paige as they ran up to join Piper and her sisters. Leo and Coop were right behind them.

"Piper, Phoebe, Paige, Holly, you're on my team," Prue directed the girls.

"Leo, Coop, Tyler, you're on mine," Andy ordered. "Melinda, you can help us out."

"Yeah!" she cheered. "Boo, Mommy!"

"Boo yourself," Piper said sarcastically. They ran to the opposite sides of the court. Andy was also the referee. He called Prue forward. She threw up the jump ball, and she and Andy both jumped up. She knocked it to the girls' team with so much force, it hit a side wall.

Piper, Phoebe, and Prue all went after the ball. Piper dribbled it down the court, and when Leo got in her way, she tossed it to Paige. She jumped up and threw the ball in the rim.

"You're going down, Andy!" Prue teased. "Great job, Paige!"

"Two to nothing!" Andy yelled.

Leo grabbed the rebound, started dribbling down the court, and tried to get it past the girls' team, but Piper caught it from her fiancé, ran down the court, dribbled the ball, and shot. The ball sailed into the basket, and the girls cheered. Prue and Piper hi-fived each other. Coop groaned.

Tyler caught the ball from Piper's previous shot and dribbled it down the court. Phoebe and Paige were blocking him, so he tossed it over their heads to Andy. He ran down to the boys' side and shot the ball. Prue jumped in front of him, but Andy made the basket and showed off by doing a chin up on the rim and then jumping down with a loud thud. The other team cheered.

Prue got the rebound and passed it to Phoebe as they ran down the court. Tyler jumped in front of Phoebe and grabbed the ball. He barreled down the court, and tried to shoot, but Paige was blocking him. He couldn't find a way around her, so Coop said, "Over here!"

Tyler sighed and gave up by passing it to Coop. He gambled and shot the ball. It bounced off the rim, and Leo was suddenly standing there. He caught it, and hurled it at the basket. Piper was on the other side, trying to get around her fiancé. The ball whirled around the rim and finally slipped in. They all sighed. Now it was a tie.

Tyler whizzed past Phoebe with the ball and sank it into the basket. Just then, Prue zoomed down the court, stole the ball from Coop, and passed it to Holly. Andy blew his whistle. "Make way for Holly!"

"Guys, we gave Tyler a little break. Can you slow down for Holly? This is just for fun." Prue stood in between Coop and Holly. "She doesn't want to be cornered. She's...she's just like me."

"Coop, you better not cause that girl her first panic attack," Phoebe warned.

"Alright, I should sit out, I don't want to scare my new niece."

"No, you can still play, but just let her have a chance," Piper said.

Holly threw the ball to Prue. "You shoot it. I can't do it under pressure."

"No, sweetheart, look, they're backing off, see?" Prue handed the ball back to Holly. "Go, and concentrate hard." She held up her hand to ward off the guys. Holly slam-dunked the ball, and the girls clapped for her. She was good!

Piper smiled until Leo decided to get revenge when Holly wasn't so close to the basket. He darted down the court, got the rebound, and ran to his side. He jumped up and shot it straight into the basket and cheered. The boys cheered wildly and gloated at Piper's team. He grabbed the ball, faked left, then right, and picked up Melinda so she could shoot it in. Piper's team was for sure winning now, and it was turning into an intense game.

"Oh yeah, we got it!" Paige shrieked crazily.

A while later, Piper started to feel extremely tired, and she felt her knees go out from under her. She fell flat on her bottom with a loud scream, and the game paused when Phoebe shouted for a time-out. Everyone rushed to her side, and Leo helped her up.

"Are you okay?" Prue asked.

"Yes, I'm fine...just had a bit of a weak moment."

"I shouldn't have made you play. You need to rest when you're pregnant," Leo said apologetically.

"No, I wanted to play...I made a basket, so there!" Piper snapped.

"You're more fragile, honey. I'm proud of you for being so strong, but I don't want you to get hurt. You can watch us."

Piper placed her hand on her stomach and breathed deeply. "Fine, for the safety of our baby, I will go to the sidelines. Go, team!"

The rest of them played until it was time for Phoebe to start dressing up for her graduation party. The girls won and Leo gave Piper a long kiss to congratulate her.

"I'm sorry I got so competitive," Coop apologized to Phoebe.

"That's okay, that's what women are for, to keep their men in line." Phoebe patted his back. They disappeared into the manor with Melinda toddling after them.

"Was I too much?" Andy asked Prue.

"A little, but at least you didn't scare anyone. I'm glad you made your team stop when you blew your whistle."

"It was only fair. You girls allowed Tyler to score us a couple points, so why wouldn't we do the same for Holly?"

Leo took Piper inside the house and sat her in his lap. "How do you feel?"

She leaned back into his arms. "Oh, Dr. Wyatt, I'm alright, I'm just a pregnant woman who doesn't just want to lay there and have everyone take care of me. How did all this happen? I've fallen down drunk before and you guys weren't telling me to relax _then_! We've had sex marathons every night and you never stopped me...why are you so concerned about me now?"

"Baby, you're almost at the end of your first trimester," Leo started to explain as he massaged her tiny bump. "We can still make love. You've only gone out for drinks twice and you haven't participated in strenuous activities like basketball until today. You collapsed in the middle of the game, and I gotta tell you, that scared me more than anything."

"Oh, it was just hot...and we should have all had water."

"It's from being pregnant. You could get toxemia if you experience unusual stress."

"What's toxemia?"

"Blood poisoning."

"Okay, well, I won't get that, since there is no unusual stress in our lives."

"You can't be so sure. Now that you're in your third, almost fourth, month of being pregnant, you have to be a lot more careful with your body. Drink a bunch of water, add more protein and calcium to your diet, take baths with Epsom salts, imagine yourself relaxing and visualize your blood pressure going down, eat a cucumber and a banana each day, and don't wear a bra if you don't absolutely need to. Tight elastic can stop blood flow. Also, we can go to a pool and you can relax in my arms since it lowers blood pressure. Those are all the ways of preventing toxemia."

"You would know," Piper said with a long sigh. "I'm already drinking a lot of water, though. I'm eating right...but I'm not really doing the other stuff. So, about this not wearing a bra thing...that better not be one of your perverted ideas."

"It's not, I was speaking as your doctor. As the love of your life, though...that _is _a perverted idea." Leo smirked and his hands went up the back of her shirt and she giggled as he undid the clasps. "Is that better?"

"Oh, yes." She moaned as they made out.

They stopped when they heard Phoebe running down the stairs with Coop. "Gotta go," she said quickly. "Not before I say goodbye to my niece or nephew, though!" After hugging Piper and Leo, she bent down and kissed Piper's stomach. "Bye-bye, baby, love the best auntie in the world!" She pulled Coop out the door with her.

"Bye, Phoebe, Coop, have fun!" Piper shouted as the door closed. She and Leo were about to continue their lip locking session, but Prue, Andy, Holly, and Tyler came into the house. Leo adjusted Piper's bra before anyone could see them.

"We played basketball while they talked for half an hour!" Holly said, and Tyler plopped down onto the couch.

"Can we play video games now?" Tyler asked.

"Sure, you pick the game," Andy told him, and they started rummaging through the vast collection in the cabinet under the television set.

Piper stood up and Leo kissed her belly. "I love you, baby!"

After he was done, Prue gave Piper's tummy a few noisy kisses. "Hey, there, I'm gonna be your favorite auntie!"

Piper laughed at the thought of her sisters fighting over her second child. "Alright, I'm about to make dinner...whoa...I need to sit down again. I can't watch that video game...too blurry."

Leo and Prue helped her up the stairs and she rested on hers and Leo's bed.

"I'll make you some soup," Prue offered.

Piper bolted upright and groaned, "Bathroom!" Leo carried her to the toilet and he held her hair back from her face as she threw up. "I don't think my stomach will agree with anything right now."

"It'll just be on your bedside until you feel like eating," her sister said. "I'm going to prepare dinner for the rest of us after I bring you your food."

"Thank you."

"Welcome."

"I'll lay with you." Leo guided her to their bed. He stroked her hair and she let herself rest in his arms.

**Thank you for reading and reviewing: pbyrond, TVADDiCT11, Shelley101, Aviva426, Marauderette96, topprueandyfan, Emma, and Emily!**

**And I just finished Charmed-the whole series! I feel breathless! It's such an amazing show!**


End file.
